10 billion years of massive Galaxies
Taylor, E.N.C.
Citation
Taylor, E. N. C. (2009, December 15). 10 billion years of massive Galaxies.
Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/1887/14509
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Curriculum vitæ
I was born on April 2, 1980 in Baltimore, MD (USA) to Australian parents. In 1990, my family moved (back) to Melbourne (AUS). I graduated from Scotch College in Hawthorn in 1997. In 1998, I began a Bachelor of Arts degree at the University of Melbourne, with a major in History. I was recognized on the Dean’s Honours List in 1999. The following year, I changed my degree to a combined Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science, with the intention of becoming an astrophysicist. In 2003, I completed an Honours year in the School of Physics;
my Honours research project was supervised by Prof. Rachel Webster.
In the course of my undergraduate degree, I spent two (Australian) summers as a vacation student. In 2001/02, I worked at the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF; Epping, AUS.) with B¨arbel Koribalski and Erwin de Blok. Then, in 2002/03 I went to the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI; Baltimore, USA), where I worked with Mark Dickinson and Harry Ferguson.
I began my doctoral research at the Leiden Observatory (Sterrewacht Leiden) in September 2004, with Marijn Franx as my supervisor. Parts of this work were completed during visits to Yale University (USA), the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (Cambridge; USA), Universidad de Chile (Santiago, CHI), and the Max-Planck Institut f¨ur Astronomie (Heidelberg, DEU).
I have attended graduate student schools in Brisbane (AUS), Dwingeloo, and Obergurgl (AUT). I have presented posters at international conferences in Mar- seille (FRA), Santa Cruz (USA), Durham (GBR), Heidelberg (DEU), and Kuala Lumpur (MYS). I have also given talks at meetings in Prague (CZE), Cardiff (GBR), Hayama (JAP), and Melbourne (AUS), as well as colloquia at the Uni- versity of Melbourne, Swinburne University, and the University of Sydney.
I am deeply committed to teaching. As an Honours student, I was a lab demonstrator in the School of Physics at the University of Melbourne in 2003 and 2004. At the Observatory, I was a teaching assistant for the bachelor subject
‘Introduction to Modern Research’ in 2005 and 2006. In addition, I have tutored at several of the Colleges connected to the University of Melbourne, and was a tutor for the undergraduate ‘Introduction to Climate Change’ subject at the University of Melbourne in 2008.
I will soon begin a postdoctoral fellowship with Andrew Hopkins (Head of Sci- ence; Anglo-Australian Observatory, AUS) and Prof. Joss Bland-Hawthorn (Uni- versity of Sydney, AUS), within the GAMA collaboration. This position will be funded by the University of Sydney; I will be based at the University of Melbourne.
Outside of astronomy, I have wide and deep interests across music, books, food, fashion, design, street art, ‘art’ art, theatre, and film. At different times, I have been a photographer, a political advocate, a tutor, a research scientist, a climbing instructor, an actor and director, and a radio comic.
Acknowledgments
My thanks go to Eric Gawiser and the entire MUSYC collaboration for giving me the opportunity to work on and with such a fantastic dataset. Ryan, thankyou for showing me the joys of NIR data reduction; Guillermo, thankyou for giving me a chance to pass that on. Thankyou also to Gabriel Brammer and Greg Rudnick for teaching me more than I ever wanted to know about phot-zs. In particular, the work presented in Chapter III would never have been possible without the EAZY photometric redshift code developed primarily by Gabriel Brammer; Gabe, I cannot thank you enough.
I also want to express my gratitude to and admiration for the SDSS team;
your ongoing contribution to the field is extraordinary. I am particularly grateful to Jarle Brinchman for deriving the stellar mass-to-light ratios used in Chapters IV and V, and to Yicheng Guo for the structural parameters used in Chapter V.
I thank both Eric Bell and Karl Glazebrook for their close collaboration on Chapters II and III and on Chapter IV, respectively.
A good part of this thesis was completed more than halfway around the world.
I am deeply grateful to both the Sterrewacht and to the University of Melbourne for making this not only possible, but easy. In particular, I thank Jan Lub for his gracious and generous support; I also thank Prof. Rachel Webster for her ongoing support and mentorship.
I thank the Nederlandse Organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek for fun- ding my graduate research position. I am very grateful to the Leidsche Kerkoven- Bosscha Fonds for providing generous travel support, which allowed me to develop and present my thesis material on five continents. I also thank the Lorentz Cen- ter for hosting our regular FIRES ‘family meetings’, which were always extremely enjoyable and productive events.
My thanks go to my scientific siblings — Ivo, Arjen, Mariska, Stijn, and Maaike — and to Andrew, Greg, Sune, Natascha, Danilo, Tracy, Vy, Gabe, Adam, and Rik, for being both scientific partners and excellent drinking companions.
Olja, Nina, Niruj, Sarah, Simon, Ryan, Rik, Maaike, Isa, Remco, Andrew, Kir- sten, Yuri: thank you for your friendship, and your patience, compassion and sup- port in (extended) times of need. I don’t know what I would’ve done without you.
To my R&R buddies Dylan, Katie, and Issy: I so value the friendships we have forged, and look forward to sipping iced tea in rocking chairs some day.
There is one person above all others who I am greatly indebted to; I am pro- foundly grateful for and humbled by your insight, intellect, wisdom and humanity.
Last by but no means least, I thank my family — Hugh, Liz, Katie, Bart, Claire, Phoebe, Isabel, Jimmy, Emeline, and the Bump — for their boundless and unconditional love, trust, support, and laughter.
To those whom I haven’t space to mention, you’re not forgotten. Thankyou.
