My research focuses on the origins of supermassive black holes, reionisation, and the first galaxies in quasar environments. You can read about my research (explained simply) on this page, and find my publication list and supplementary paper data here. I obtained my PhD at the University of Cambridge, and conducted two postdoc positions at University College London and at the Max Planck Institute in Heidelberg before starting the Frontier Research Group.

Benedetta studies the intergalactic medium both during Hydrogen reionisation and Helium reionisation using both modelling and observations. Her ongoing research is attempting to directly measure the neutral fraction at z~6 using the morphology of gaps in the Lyman-alpha forest. Benedetta obtained her PhD from the University of Bonn. 

Klaudia is conducting her PhD in the group on the topic of proximate Lyman-alpha emitters: galaxies living very close to bright quasars in the early Universe, such that their intrinsically double-peaked Lyman-alpha emission line is visible. She is a member of IMPRS-Heidelberg. Her first paper, on LAE-11 at z=6.6, is published: https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.12256

Shengxiu has joined our group on a CSC Scholarship. He is using LBT-LUCI observations of SDSS-RM quasars to obtain better virial estimator of black hole mass using the Paschen-series emission lines.

Arpita started her PhD in 2025. She is using SphereX data to study hot dusty structures around quasars and understand the conditions that shape their presence and properties.

Seyeon is a joint PhD student between our group and the REIGM theory research group at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. She is developing numerical simulations of the IGM which will enable us to constrain reionisation history and the properties of Warm Dark Matter from GHOSTLy data.

Lasse recently started looking for analogue of Little Red Dots in the late Universe. In the process, he found a very interesting low-z AGN...

Goraksh has joined the group for a year with an IISER-MPG scholarship! He is forward-modelling the galaxy-IGM connection in various models of reionisation.

Yu-Ruei is looking for presence of a galaxy overdensity in one of the most transparent Lyman-alpha forest sightlines during reionisation.

Juri is doing an internship in our group on the topic of the relation between BLR size and luminosity in bright quasars.

Jonathan is a master student working on a thesis on the topic of high-redshift quasars. He is looking for variability in the infrared brightness of the first quasars using archival and new data from the GROND instrument. A paper based on his thesis results is in prep.

Saba is a PhD student at the University of Chicago who previously did an internship in Heidelberg as an MPIA summer student. She visited us to finish a project which arose from that internship: putting the tightest constraints on temperature fluctuations in the intergalactic medium arising form Helium reionisation at z~4. Her paper is now submitted: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2025arXiv250105575E/abstract

Bartosz was a student at the University of Heidelberg who conducted his master's thesis on the topic of quasar evolution. He found close analogues of the first quasars at later times using eBOSS and X-Shooter data.

Ander conducted a master's thesis studying the intergalactic medium. He is developing a new method for constraining the nature of dark matter using machine-learning of the Lyman-alpha forest. Ander works in collaboration with Dr. Prakash Gaikwad of the REIGM research group at MPIA. Ander is now a PhD student in the IMPRS-TRUST program at the Max Planck Institute for Software Systems in Kaiserlautern.

His thesis work has been submitted to A&A: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2024arXiv241117853A