There are opportunities in this group from time to time for graduate MSc and PhD projects, as well as summer undergraduate research projects.

Graduate students may enter through the Astronomy program or Physics program, and also pursue a joint degree in Scientific Computing.

Please contact our Graduate Secretary (grad "at"

astro.uwo.ca) for graduate application information.

We are in pursuit of the answer to the following

question: What is the ultimate outcome of gravitational instability in interstellar gas?

We already know the final answer: stars are produced!

But gravity alone implies that stars would be much more massive than observed, and that there would be many more stars being formed than we can see.

To answer the question of how stellar masses are determined (indeed, there is a distribution of masses, known as the Initial Mass Function), we also need to account for the influences of magnetic fields, turbulence, and strong outflows driven from young stellar objects. These processes are far more complex than gravity itself!

I am also interested in astrophysical gas dynamics in general, and we have performed many research projects which model the large-scale dynamics of gas in galaxies. Astronomical data also provides great opportunities for mathematical and statistical analyses.

This is a great time to be studying interstellar gas dynamics and star formation, due to the availability of data of unprecedented resolution and sensitivity from new global observatories, and for the ability to apply increasingly powerful computers to solve the complex nonlinear equations of astrophysical gas dynamics.