• Western  |  
• Faculty of Science   |  
• Physics & Astronomy   |  
• My Home Page

To My Prospective Graduate Student,

I am a Professor here at The University of Western Ontario in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. I am also an Associate Dean, Faculty/Staff Relations and Infrastructure, for the Faculty of Science.

My research is conducted in the Astronomy Group within the Department of Physics and Astronomy.

I primarily work on the dynamics of circumstellar disks which surround massive stars. Circumstellar material is common among hot, early-type stars and often takes the form of an equatorial disk. However, the formation, maintenance, and evolution of these disks remains poorly understood.

I am looking for both MSc and PhD students interested in studying the dynamics of circumstellar disks through computer simulation. Numerical radiative transfer techniques are used to predict emission-line spectra, monochromatic images of the circumstellar material and other observational features of these star/disk systems.

Models are constrained by comparison to images obtained via the rapidly developing field of optical interferometry and to spectroscopy, photometry and polarimetry obtained at a wide variety of wavelengths.

This research offers many computationally challenging problems.

If you are interested in graduate school and my work, I would really like to talk with you. If possible, I suggest that you plan to visit Western to see our facilities, to talk to me, and see other members of our Department.

If you have any questions or would like more information, please feel free to email me.