Harry Desmond


Senior Research Fellow, Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation, University of Portsmouth


Supervisions

I have had the privilege of supervising a wonderful group of postdocs, PhD students and undergraduates over the years. Below I list my postdoctoral and doctoral supervisees, with a summary of what we have worked on together.

Postdoctoral researchers

Indranil Banik (Portsmouth, 2024 –) [our papers]

Local solutions to the Hubble tension and the (in)homogeneity of the local Universe.

Ricardo Landim (Portsmouth, 2022 – 2024) [our papers]

Constraining screened scalar-tensor theories of gravity using galaxy dynamics.

PhD students

Deaglan J. Bartlett (Oxford DPhil, 2019 – 2022) [our papers]

Thesis “Fundamental physics from galaxies”: field-level tests of modified gravity and dark matter. Also symbolic regression. Now a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford.

Tariq Yasin (Oxford DPhil, 2019 – 2023) [our papers]

Thesis “Combining kinematic and photometric constraints on the galaxy–halo connection”: Bayesian modelling of HI line profiles and comparison to empirical models of the galaxy-halo connection. Also tests of cosmic anisotropy with clusters. Now a postdoctoral fellow at Oxford.

Richard Stiskalek (Oxford DPhil, 2022 – 2026) [our papers]

Thesis “Constrained simulations of the local Universe as a laboratory for precision cosmology and astrophysics”: Leveraging constrained large-scale structure simulations for new tests of cosmology and galaxy formation: the cosmography of the local Universe, peculiar-velocities, the distance ladder, H₀ inference and various other things.

Alicia Martin (Oxford DPhil, 2023 –) [our papers]

Machine-learning fundamental physics from cosmology, with a focus on symbolic regression of halo properties.

Antonio Najera (Portsmouth, 2024 –) [our papers]

New handles on the cosmic distance ladder: investigating and developing alternative distance-calibration methods, and models for the Hubble tension.

Undergraduate and masters students

I have supervised research projects for over twenty BSc and MPhys/MSci students across Portsmouth, Oxford, Carnegie Mellon, and collaborating institutions, which has led to a great many publications. Get in touch if you’re interested in working with me!