Who Are We?
The research we present on this website has been done by members of the Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC), which is part of the University of Durham. On this page we will tell you a bit about the people that make up this institute.
The Institute for Computational Cosmology
The ICC is located in the historic city of Durham, with the Ogden Centre West building serving as its headquarters (see the cover picture above). This building was designed by renowned architect Studio Libeskind and was inaugurated in early 2017. It is currently shared among three research groups, the other two being the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy (focused on observational astronomy) and the Centre for Advanced Instrumentation.
The ICC was founded in November 2002 as part of the Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics, which also includes the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP). While the ICC as a dedicated building for theoretical cosmology saw its beginning in the early 2000s, the research groups that make up the ICC have roots decades before. Durham University's extragalactic astronomy group was founded in the late 1970s. A group researching theoretical cosmology grew steadily during the 1980s and 1990s.
One of the main areas being researched at the ICC is the nature of dark matter, which makes up the largest fraction of the total mass of the universe (about 83%). The standard cosmological model (LCDM) assumes a ‘cold’ dark matter particle, or in other words, a very massive particle that only interacts gravitationally. Nevertheless, there are other candidates which have not yet been ruled out by observational data, such as a lighter mass one (‘warm’ dark matter) or even one that is able to interact via other forces aside from gravity (e.g. self-interacting dark matter). By studying how these models’ predictions differ between one another, we might be able to better understand dark matter, and consequently, how galaxies like our own form.
On much smaller scales, there is also a section within the ICC that focuses on planetary physics, running some of the most detailed simulations of how proto-planets collide! Using these tools, we hope to better understand how our own Moon formed, as well as explaining the origin of some of the most interesting features of the Solar System planets, such as Uranus’ tilted axis, the Mars hemispheric dichotomy and why the core of Mercury is so large.
As of July 2020, there are 16 academic staff members, 5 computing staff members, 17 postdocs and 32 postgraduate students. Each member of the ICC has their own interests and works on their own projects, but in the end we all collaborate towards a common goal: understanding how the universe works and how it was formed.
For more information on the ICC, please follow this link to our website!
Meet some of the astronomers working at the ICC:
Dr. Azadeh Fattahi explains why she became an astronomer.