Professor Ofer Lahav

Ofer Lahav is Perren Chair of Astronomy in the Astrophysics Group at University College London (UCL) and Vice-Dean (International) of the UCL Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MAPS). He is also Co-Director of the STFC-funded Centre for Doctoral Training in Data Intensive Science at UCL. Ofer's research area is Observational Cosmology, in particular probing Dark Matter and Dark Energy. His work involves Machine Learning for Big Data. 

Publications List (via UCL IRIS)

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Notable Events

• The DES Book was published in September 2020, and two virtual launch events were held on 13 October 2020 and 25 November 2020.  

 

• The RAS George Darwin 2020 Lecture was delivered by Ofer on 9 October 2020. A recording of the lecture is available on the RAS website (slides available here), and you can watch Ofer receiving his lectureship award at the RAS Award Ceremony 2020. 

 

• The virtual launch of the Newton-funded UCL-Jordan Data Science programme was held on 24 April 2020.

 

• From Deep Learning to the Dark Universe: A conference held in honour of Ofer's 60th Birthday

 

Education and Previous Roles

Ofer studied at Tel-Aviv University (BSc, 1980), at Ben-Gurion University (MSc, 1985; supervised by Jacob Bekenstein) and earned his PhD from the University of Cambridge (1988; supervised by George Efstathiou and Donald Lynden-Bell), where he was later a Member of Staff at the Institute of Astronomy (1990-2003) and a Fellow of St Catharine's College.

At UCL he previously served as Head of Astrophysics (2004-2011), establishing Cosmology as a research area, and as Vice-Dean (for Research) of the Faculty of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (2011-2015).

Research and Publications

Research Topics

• Cosmological probes of Dark Matter and Dark Energy
• Large spectroscopic and photometric redshift surveys
• Neutrino Cosmology
• Formation and evolution of galaxies
• Data Science

During 2012-2018 he held a European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant on "Testing the Dark Energy Paradigm" (TESTDE).

Ofer has over 400 research articles in refereed journals, see full publication list.

Other relevant links:

• Cosmology Group
• DES:UCL

 

Current and Past PhD Students

Over the years, Ofer has supervised over 30 PhD students at Cambridge and UCL.

Current PhD Students

• Lucy Clerkin
• Ben Henghes
• Constantina Nicolaou
• Sunil Mucesh
• Prabh Bhambra
• Joshua Williamson

Past PhD Students

At Cambridge: Caleb Scharf, Avi Naim, Andy Loan, Simon Folkes, Matthew Webster, Manula Magliocchetti, Andrew Firth, Darren Madgwick, Pirin Erdogdu, Adrian Collister, Vivienne Wild 

At UCL: Anais Rassat, Alexandra Abate, Chris Lintott, Angeliki Kiakotou , Manda Banerji, Shuan Thomas, Adam Hawken, Fotini Economou, Morgan Hollis, Maayane Soumagnac. Antonella Palmese, Davide Gualdi, Michael McLeod, John Soo, Niall Jeffrey, Krishna Naidoo

 

Current and Past Postdocs

Current Postdocs

• Qianjun (Ellen) Hang
• Lorne Whiteway

Past Postdocs

At Cambridge: Karl Fisher, Basilio Santiago, Sarah Bridle, Jochen Weller, Oystein Elgaroy, Irit Maor

At UCL: Igancio Ferreras, Filipe Abdalla, Kazuhide Ichikawa, Eduardo Cypriano. Manda Benerji, Ole Host, Gert Hutsi, Molly Swanson, Chris Sabiu, Sree Balan, Aurelien Benoit-Levy, Stephanie Jouvel, Donnacha Kirk, Michelle Lochner, Marc Manera, Alex Merson, Iftach Sadeh, Will Hartley, Anges Ferte, Satya Gontcho a Gontcho, Fabian Krause, Pablo Lemos

Collaborative international projects

• The Dark Energy Survey - Survey of 300,000,000 galaxies to study the nature of Dark Energy 
• HST Clash - Hubble Space Telescope imaging survey of galaxy clusters 
• DESI - The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument 
• LSST - The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope 
• Euclid - Space Mission; ESA's Cosmic Vision

Selected Reviews and Semi Popular Articles

• "The Dark Energy Survey: The Story of a Cosmological Experiment" Edited by Lahav, O., Calder, L., Mayers, J. & Frieman, J., World Scientific (2020)
• "The Cosmological Parameters 2019" Lahav, O. & Liddle, A.R. (2019) - Invited review, in "The Review of Particle Physics" (Particle Data Group)
• "A tribute to Jacob Bekenstein",  Lahav, O., In the memorial volume "Jacob Bekenstein: The Conservative Revolutionary",  World Scientific (2019)
• "A tribute to Donald Lynden-Bell", Lahav, O., Observatory Magazine, 138, 261 (2018)
• "The Dark Energy Survey: more than Dark Energy - an overview" DES collaboration, MNRAS, 460, 1270 (2016)
• "Dark Energy, paradigm shifts and the role of evidence " Lahav, O. & Massimi, M., RAS A&G June 2014 issue
• "Dark Energy: how the paradigm shifted" Calder, L. & Lahav, O., Physics World, Jan 2010 issue
• "Let there be darkness, let there be light" Lahav, O., Odyssey magazine (in Hebrew), Jan 2010 issue, pg. 38
• "Dark Energy: back to Newton?" Calder, L. & Lahav,O., RAS A&G, Feb 2008 issue (revised version)

Selected Recent Presentations

• RAS George Darwin Lecture 2020: "Darkness Visible: AI in Cosmological Experiments", delivered in October 2020 (slides available here).
• "Machine Learning in Astronomy", delivered in ‘Nails and Hammers’ at the Weizmann Institute (August 2019) and as a guest lecture at the CDT ML  course (March 2020)
• Conference summary talk  - Cosmic Flows 2020 (in honour of Renee Kraan-Korteweg), Stellenbosch South Africa  (February 2020)
• "Wide-field optical surveys: from Dark Energy to Gravitational-Wave counterparts", Invited talk given at the Kavli Symposium, Oslo (2016)
• "Neutrino mass from cosmological surveys", Invited talk given at Neutrino 2016, London (2016)
• "Jacob Bekenstein's Universe: from Black Holes to modified theory of Gravity", Invited talk in Bekenstein's memorial meeting, the Israeli Academy, Jerusalem (2016)
• RAS Gerald Whitrow Lecture 2014, "The enigma of Dark Matter and Dark Energy: Have we been here before?", delivered at NAM in Porsmouth (2014)

Software Packages

• ANNz2: Photometric redshifts using Machine Learning (Sadeh, Abdalla & Lahav 2016)
• ANNz: Photometric redshifts using Artificial Neural Networks (Collister & Lahav 2004)
• ExoFit: Orbital parameters of extra-solar planets from radial velocities using Bayesian MCMC (Balan & Lahav 2008)

Scientific Committees

Ofer is one of the founders of the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and he co-chaired the international DES Science Committee from inception until 2016. He also participates in the next-generation surveys (DESI, Euclid, LSST). He chairs both the DES:UK and DESI:UK consortia. He served as Vice-President of the Royal Astronomical Society (2010-2012), and as a member of the STFC Science Board (2016-2019). Currently is a member of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Astro Partilce Physics European Consortium (APPEC).

Recent Media Reports and Public Outreach

• New dark matter map reveals cosmic mystery - BBC News at Ten, BBC News at Six, BBC online, Nature, UCL Press Release (2021)
• Spotlight on... Professor Ofer Lahav - UCL News (2021)
• DES releases a catalogue of 700 million astronomical objects - UKRI website (2021)
• Telescope tracks 35 millon galaxies in Dark Energy hunt - BBC News at Ten, BBC News at Six, BBC World Service and BBC online (2019)
• Space exploration: a good investment? - TRT TV Round-Table discussion on (video, 26 min) (2019) 
• Dark Matter & Dark Energy - Panel Discussion at the Edinburgh International Science Festival (video, 1 hr) (2018)
• Witches, goblins and the quest to solve the mystery of dark matter - Observer article for Dark Matter Day (2018)
• Catching the first light from a gravitational wave event (2017)
• DES accurately measures the dark universe - BBC online (2017)
• DES Scientist of the week - DES website (2017)
• The DES Movie (video, 36 min) (2016)
• 100 years of Einsten's General Relativity (animation video, 3 min) (2015)
• Science is Everything - Guardian online (video, 3 min) (2015)
• Radio 4 Today Programme (audio, from 84 min) (2013)
• The Nature of Dark Energy and Dark Matter: Are New Laws of Physics required? - Lecture at the Royal Institution (audio, 1hr 27 min) (2013)
• Interview to the Economist (video, 7 min) (2012)

 

 

Last Updated: 26 March 2024