Emma Lofthouse

Experience

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  University of Hertfordshire

  Sept 2013 - Sept 2017

  PHD Researcher

  While a PhD candidate, I focused on exploiting and combining very large datasets from multiple major telescopes to further our understanding of how galaxies evolve. I used data mining techniques to clean and extract information in order to study the distribution of star formation and make inferences about the nature of galaxies. I showed that mergers between two comparable galaxies, while dramatic, are rare and have little impact on the overall evolution of our Universe.

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  Durham University

  May 2018 - Apr 2020

  Postdoctoral Research Assistant

  As the scientific lead of the MAGG survey, I managed the data science pipeline to process, clean and distribute large datasets of astronomical data.Utilising this data, I explored individual cases in detail to identify low signal-to-noise features and showed that the nature of gas around galaxies is much more complex and diverse than previously thought.

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  Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca

  May 2020 - May 2023

  Postdoctoral Research Assistant

  During this position, I was responsible for developing a sequence classification model using random forest to identify and model features in galaxy spectra. This model was successful at identifying up to 90% of features, comparable to human classification, but was able to complete the work in hours rather than months.I also completed one of the first statistically significant studies connecting gas and galaxies in the distant Universe by analysing datasets containing thousands of galaxies using correlation, regression and clustering methods. Show less

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  BCA UK

  Jun 2024 - now

  Data Scientist