SSA QLD Branch Meeting: Applying statistics to 3D maps of our Universe to understand its history and future

Please join us in person or online for our May Queensland Branch Meeting. The seminar will start at 5:00 pm. Details for the seminar are provided below.

TITLE: Applying statistics to 3D maps of our Universe to understand its history and future

SPEAKER: Dr Cullan Howlett, University of Queensland

TIME: 5:00 - 6:30 pm (AEST), 29^th May 2024

VENUE:  205 Showcase Suite, 308 Queen St, Brisbane and online (Zoom details will be sent with registration).
Special instructions for in-person venue:

1. Enter through the main door at 308 Queen Street and pass through the Atrium. Speak to the concierge at the elevator located at the back of the room, and notify them that you are attending the Statistical Society of Australia event.
2. Please note that there are a limited number of in-person registrations. If you have registered to attend in-person and are no longer able to make it, please cancel your registration to allow other people to attend in-person. Thank you!

Please note that the seminar will be recorded and might be put on YouTube or similar platform.

ABSTRACT:

Our surveys of the night sky have uncovered millions of galaxies just like our own Milky Way. Some of the largest astronomy projects in Australia and overseas involve mapping and analysing the positions of these galaxies, with the aim to determine how our Universe formed and has evolved over the last 14 billion years. Analysing data of this size requires applying state-of-the-art statistical and machine-learning techniques to tease out patterns in these distributions that encode the history of our cosmos.

In this talk, I will cover some of what we do, the techniques we use/borrow for other fields for this, and what we have subsequently learnt about the Universe. These results demonstrate that interaction between the statistical and astronomy communities is essential to make the most of the wealth of data at our fingertips.

SPEAKER'S BIO:

Dr Cullan Howlett is a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Queensland and recipient of a 2023 QLD Young Tall Poppy Award. Since completing his PhD in 2016 at the University of Portsmouth, he has been involved in some of the largest international surveys of other galaxies in our Universe ever undertaken. He currently leads working groups in the international projects DESI and 4HS, which combined will map almost the entire nearby Universe over the next 5 years.