Professor Ofer Lahav

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 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

 

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 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

• 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

• "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)

• 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)

• 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)

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).

• 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)