Michael G. Jones

Contact Info

e-mail: mjonesiaa.es www.astro.cornell.edu/~jonesmg Dpto. Astronomía Extragaláctica Instituto Astrofísica Andalucía Glorieta de la Astronomía s/n 18008 Granada Spain

Background

I graduated from the University of Cambridge (UK) in 2011 with a masters in natural sciences, after studying physics and astrophysics for 4 years there. For my PhD I moved to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York (USA). I spent 5 years there working with Martha Haynes and Riccardo Giovanelli on the ALFALFA HI (neutral hydrogen) galaxy survey. My PhD research focused on the statistical properties of the ALFALFA galaxy population, assessing the environmental dependence of the HI mass function and making predictions of the impact of source confusion on deep surveys and stacking experiments to be carried out with SKA-precursor facilities.

In 2016 I moved to Granada (Spain) to work with Lourdes Verdes-Montenegro at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Andalucía as a post-doc in the AMIGA project. I now focus on the comparison of the HI properties of AMIGA's isolated galaxy population with galaxies in compact groups. Isolated galaxies represent a "nuture free" reference sample of galaxies who's properties have not been influenced by neighbours. In contrast, compact groups, though only containing small numbers of galaxies, are some of the highest galaxy density regions in the Universe. Their formation and evolution is not yet well understood and HI will be a key tracer in unravelling that mystery.

I am also the co-PI (along with Rebecca Koopmann) of the APPSS project. This is a survey of the Pisces-Perseus supercluster filament with the Arecibo telescope aimed at using the HI and optical properties of galaxies to create a velocity field capable of robustly measuring the inflow of galaxies on to the filament.