Brian O'Shea

I am a computational and theoretical astrophysicist, and my research involves numerical simulations and analytical modeling of cosmological structure formation, the cosmic web, galaxy clusters, high-redshift galaxies, and Milky Way-type galaxies. My tools of choice are the Enzo AMR code and the yt data analysis and visualization package.

My research focuses on theoretical and numerical studies of galaxy formation and evolution, spanning a wide range of topics including the first generations of stars and galaxies, low redshift galaxies and the intergalactic medium, and galaxy clusters.  My  numerical work is done on the largest supercomputers in the world, including the NSF-funded Blue Waters supercomputer at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

I am an associate professor at Michigan State University, with a joint appointment in The Department of Computational Mathematics, Science and Engineering, the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory. I am also a member of the Joint Institute for Nuclear Astrophysics, the Michigan Institute for Plasma Science and Engineering, and the Great Lakes Consortium for Petascale Computation.

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This is a figure of one of the first galaxies to form in the universe, from a large-scale simulation including cosmological expansion, dark matter, fluid dynamics, radiation transport, and prescriptions for the formation and feedback of stars and black holes. This image shows both stars and nebular emission from ionized gas. Image credit: John Wise, Georgia Institute of Technology.