Dr Michelle Collins
About
Biography
Michelle Collins was awarded a PhD in Astronomy by the University of Cambridge in 2011, where she worked under the supervision of Scott Chapman and Mike Irwin. After receiving her degree, she continued her research for 3 years as a Galaxies and Cosmology fellow at the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg. In October 2014, she took up a Hubble Fellowship at Yale University, working alongside Marla Geha and her research group. She officially joined the University of Surrey as a lecturer at the same time, and will be permanently based at Surrey from October 2015. Her research focuses on the observations of Local Group galaxies, particularly on performing resolved stellar spectroscopy in Andromeda and its dwarf galaxies in order to constrain dark matter models, and the processes governing galaxy evolution.
Research interests
- Galactic archaeology
- Galaxy formation and evolution
- Local Group galaxies
- Dark matter
News
ResearchResearch interests
My work focuses on the faintest galaxies we can observe in the Universe. These systems appear to be rich in dark matter and likely formed their stars in the very early Universe. As such, we can use them to probe the nature of the Universe and the conditions for star formation at the earliest epochs. As an observer, I use telesopes to find these galaxies, measure their dynamics and star formation histories. We can then compare these observations to predictions from cosmology and high-resolution simulations.
Research interests
My work focuses on the faintest galaxies we can observe in the Universe. These systems appear to be rich in dark matter and likely formed their stars in the very early Universe. As such, we can use them to probe the nature of the Universe and the conditions for star formation at the earliest epochs. As an observer, I use telesopes to find these galaxies, measure their dynamics and star formation histories. We can then compare these observations to predictions from cosmology and high-resolution simulations.
Supervision
Postgraduate research supervision
Teaching
I currently teach our third year cosmology and galaxy formation course (PHY3055) and co-teach our Research Techniques in Astronomy module (PHY3054). I also supervise students in our second year laboratory class.