Understanding galaxies on the pathway to the Square Kilometre Array

With the Square Kilometre Array now being built, radio astronomy is expanding its observational capabilities virtually beyond recognition. It is expanding so fast that radio observations undoubtedly represent the cornerstone of humanity's future capability to study distant galaxies, e.g. by measuring their star formation rates and stellar masses. Furthermore, radio observations are known to be impervious to dust obscuration (which becomes particularly prevalent in more distant galaxies) and uniquely sensitive to star formation, making radio data an ideal tracer of the properties of galaxies over practically the whole of cosmic history. Despite the technical advances, we don't yet know how to handle the impending explosion of data alongside the much more familiar observations e.g. at optical wavelengths.

The PhD student will lead the task of using radio continuum emission from SKA pathfinders alongside data at other wavelengths throughout the electromagnetic spectrum, to determine galaxy properties and demonstrate the immense power of the radio regime, also confronting the state-of-the-art observations with predictions from the latest simulations. These tasks are critical for extracting the science from the deluge of observations that the SKA and its pre-cursors are beginning to churn out, at the start of a "boom" time for radio astronomy.