Curriculum Vitæ: Dr. Richard Massey

Personal details

Address	Institute for Astronomy Royal Observatory Edinburgh Blackford Hill Edinburgh EH9 3HJ UK
Telephone	+44 (0)131 668 8363
E-mail	rm [at] roe.ac.uk
Web page	http://www.astro.caltech.edu/~rjm/
Nationality	British
Date of birth	14^th October 1977
Erdős number	4 (P. Erdős → H.S. Shapiro → M. Tegmark → B. Jain → R. Massey)
Bacon number	4 (K. Bacon → S. Willis → J. Stewart → N. Tyson → R. Massey)

Research overview

The night sky contains a huge amount of stars, galaxies and dust. Everything we see is made of the same basic "baryonic" material as our bodies, the air we breathe, and the computer that you're looking at. We understand it fairly well. However, mounting evidence from several sources now agrees that this is only a few percent of the total amount of stuff in the Universe.

Six times as much mass is in the form of invisible "dark matter". This interacts with ordinary baryons only through the force of gravity. It does not interact through electromagnetism, and therefore neither emits nor reflects light. It can be seen only indirectly — for example, because its additional gravity makes galaxies rotate faster than otherwise possible. One potential candidate for dark matter is the least massive of the (as-yet unobserved) supersymmetric particles.

Three times more common than dark matter is the even more mysterious "dark energy". This acts as a repulsive force on very large scales, in a tug-of-war against the attraction of gravity. The universe has been expanding since the Big Bang, but now it has grown large, dark energy is accelerating that expansion. Its properties will eventually decide the fate of the universe.

Unfortunately, almost all current scientific knowledge concerns only the (few percent) baryons. The extra ingredients are challenging our fundamental theories of particle physics and General Relativity. I'm currently trying to learn more about the nature of dark matter, mainly via the effect of "gravitational lensing". As with any new frontier, the first thing to do is to map it out and look at the lie of the land.

See also a list of papers I've published.

Research experience

Mar 2008 → present	STFC Advanced Fellow, Royal Observatory Edinburgh.
Analysis of Pan-STARRS survey. Observational search with HST for colliding objects similar to the bullet cluster. Extension of Subaru cluster lensing survey to comparison with optical and x-ray data.
Mar 2007 → Mar 2008	Senior Postdoctoral Scholar, California Institute of Technology.
Principal Investigator of NASA-funded programme to ameliorate CTE problems with the HST ACS camera due to radiation damage, in preparation for shuttle servicing mission SM4. Also seeking to mitigate similar effects in the planned SNAP satellite. Extension of shapelets methods to analyse the non-linear gravitational signal, flexion, and coordination of the FLIP simulation programme.
Jan 2004 → Mar 2007	Postdoctoral Research Scholar, California Institute of Technology.
Weak gravitational lensing analysis of COSMOS, the largest ever survey with HST. My resulting map of dark matter generated a lot of publicity, and was judged #7 in Discover magazine's Top 100 Science Stories of 2007. Measurement of the density and mass function of galaxy clusters, via a wide-area weak lensing survey with the Subaru telescope. Lead developer of shapelets image manipulation and analysis method. My accompanying software package now has many users worldwide. As well as weak lensing, it has also been applied to problems in such diverse fields as sunspot analysis, galaxy morphology evolution, chemical molecular structure, biological cell networks, brain lesions in neuroscience, and other pattern recognition. Lead developer of astronomical image simulation software. This is the mainstay of the mission simulation and optimisation tool for the SNAP satellite project (of which I have been a member since 2002), and the basis of the STEP programme. Co-coordinator of the international STEP programme to optimise methods for the measurement of cosmological weak gravitational lensing. Modelling the focus of HST to provide a physical explanation, and a workable solution, to the apparent temporal variation in the optical Point Spread Function of the ACS camera.

See also a list of papers I've published.

Education

2000 → 2003	Clare college, Cambridge university PhD Thesis: "Weighing the Universe with weak gravitational lensing". Supervisor: Alexandre Refregier.
1996 → 2000	University college, Durham university MSci Mathematics and Physics (1^st class honours & Chalmers prize for top mark) Thesis: "On the Topology of Large Scale Structure". Supervisor: Shaun Cole.
Summer 1999	Joint Astronomy Centre, Hawai'i UKIRT summer student.
Summer 1998	Anglo-Australian Observatory Summer student & University College Trust travel scholar.
1989 → 1996	Queen Mary's Grammar School, Walsall

Public understanding of science

I really enjoy this! I have appeared on six TV documentaries for National Geographic, NOVA, and cable channels Einstein TV/bluesci. I have also been interviewed by radio stations throughout the world — from the morning breakfast show on KiwiFM, to the BBC world service and NPR Science Friday. I have delivered invited public lectures at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and the Royal Observatory Edinburgh.

More locally, I have judged the science fairs at St. Phillip's school in Pasadena for the past four years. I have consulted at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. I have helped public observing nights at the IoA in Cambridge and IfA in Edinburgh, and I took part in the 2003 Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition in London.

My own work on dark matter maps was a major press release at the 2007 meeting of the American Astronomical Society. It has featured in many newspapers and magazines, including the front pages of Nature, The Independent newspaper and the BBC news web site. It has also appeared in exhibits at the London Science Museum and New York MoMA.

Telescope time and awarded grants

I have acquired major imaging surveys on the WHT, Keck II, Subaru and Hubble Space telescopes. Through various projects, I have also accumulated observing experience on the AAT, Keck I, UKIRT, and the UK Schmidt telescopes. Additional grants not associated with telescope time include:

Co-I of Royal Observatory Edinburgh STFC Rolling Grant with P.I. John Peacock
"Extragalactic Astronomy and Cosmology at Edinburgh".
Principal Investigator of European Union FP7-PEOPLE grant IRG-208994 (€100,000)
"Understanding the Dark Universe with 3D Weak Gravitational Lensing".
Co-I of NASA HST grant AR-11747 with P.I. Joel Berge ($50,000)
"Shapelet analysis of the COSMOS field".
Co-I of NASA HST grant AR-11769 with P.I. Jason Rhodes ($70,000)
"Mitigating Image Persistence in WFC3 NIR Observations to Allow Weak Lensing Shape Measurements".
STFC Advanced Fellowship (£457,634).
Co-I of JPL DRDF grant 2008-112 with P.I. Jason Rhodes ($160,000)
"Ameliorating Non-linear Detector Effects in Weak Gravitational Lensing Measurements".
Principal Investigator of NASA HST grant AR-10964 ($50,000)
"Correcting effects of Charge Transfer Inefficiency in the ACS Wide Field Camera".
Collaborator on Beyond Einstein Foundation Science grant N5-BEFS05-0024 with P.I. Jason Rhodes ($280,000)
"Weak Gravitational Lensing Using Multi-band Imaging".
Collaborator on NASA grant ATP04-0000-0067 with P.I. David Goldberg ($274,127)
"Galaxy Flexion — Gravitational Lensing to Second Order".

Teaching and other activities

Nov 2008 → Dec 2008	Lecturer for University of Edinburgh Physics 1A undergraduate course "Oscillations & waves".
Aug 2008 → present	Supervisor of Edinburgh PhD student Rachel McInnes.
Aug 2007	Invited lecturer at SLAC Summer Institute.
Oct 2006 → Feb 2007	Supervisor of undergraduate research project by Marissa Cevallos at CalTech.
Jun 2006 → Aug 2006	Supervisor of CalTech SURF Edgar Shaghoulian (now PhD student at U.C. Berkeley).
May 2005 → Aug 2005	Co-supervisor (with J. Rhodes) of CalTech SURF Matt Ferry (now PhD student at CalTech).
May 2005 → Aug 2005	Co-supervisor (with J. Taylor) of CalTech SURF Andy Green (now PhD student in Melbourne).
Jan 2005 → Aug 2005	Co-supervisor (with P. Schechter) of Molly Peeples's senior/4th year thesis "Simulations of Strong Gravitational Lensing for the Study of Substructure in Galaxy Clusters".
Jun 2004 → Feb 2005	Co-supervisor (with R. Ellis) for PhD student Alexie Leauthaud (now postdoc at U.C. Berkeley).
May 2004 → Aug 2004	Supervisor of CalTech SURF Molly Peeples (now PhD student at Ohio State).
May 2004 → Aug 2004	Co-supervisor (with J. Rhodes) of CalTech SURF Will High (now PhD student at Harvard).
Sep 2002 → Dec 2003	Teaching assistant for undergraduate physics at Clare college, Cambridge.

	Panel member of Time Allocation/Funding Review Committees.
	Referee for academic journals.
Sep 2004 → Oct 2007	Host of CalTech's weekly astronomy seminar series.
May 2004 → Oct 2007	Member of Caltech Postdoctoral Association social committee.

	Private consultant on image analysis with industrial applications.

Recent invited talks

Jun 2008	Russian Geographical Society, St. Petersburg.
Apr 2008	University of St. Andrews astronomy department colloquium.
Apr 2008	Royal Observatory Edinburgh colloquium.
Feb 2008	University of Minnesota astronomy department colloquium.
Nov 2007	Ohio State University astronomy department colloquium.
Aug 2007	NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Aug 2007	SLAC Summer Institute.
Jun 2007	Drexel university physics department colloquium.
Jun 2007	Evening public lecture at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
May 2007	Texas A&M workshop on the Interconnection Between Particle Physics and Cosmology speaker and discussion panellist.
May 2007	Stanford university/Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology colloquium.
Mar 2007	University of Southern California physics department colloquium.