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Professor Darren Croton

Professor
PhD, Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Germany; BSc (Honours), Australian National University, Australia

Biography

Darren Croton is a Professor of Astrophysics at Swinburne’s Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing. His research concerns understanding the formation and evolution of galaxies in the local and high redshift universe, using both simulations and large observational data sets.

Professor Croton is especially interested in the development of models of galaxy formation embedded in large cosmological simulations, supermassive black holes and quasars, galaxy environment, galaxy clustering, and large-scale voids. His most recent project is to build the ‘Theoretical Astrophysical Observatory’ (TAO; tao.asvo.org.au) ¬– an online eResearch laboratory that allows astronomers to construct their own virtual universes from a range of different simulation and galaxy formation model data, filter the output through a virtual telescope, and download the results for their own scientific use.

Professor Croton is a member of a number of large international survey teams including the HST Cosmic Assembly Near-IR Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS), the Spitzer Warm Mission Extended Deep Survey (SEDS), the WiggleZ Galaxy Redshift Survey, and the AEGIS Collaboration. Recently he has been involved in the SAMI Galaxy Survey, the Taipan Galaxy Survey, and various Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) surveys, such as WALLABY, EMU, and FLASH.



Research interests

Astronomy; Cosmology and the Big Bang; Galaxy formation and evolution; Black holes and quasars; Large galaxy surveys; Supercomputer simulations of galaxies and the Universe; Dark matter and dark energy; High performance computing in science

PhD candidate and honours supervision

Higher degrees by research

Accredited to supervise Masters & Doctoral students as Principal Supervisor.

Honours

Available to supervise honours students.

Fields of Research

  • Cosmology And Extragalactic Astronomy - 510103
  • Galactic Astronomy - 510104

Teaching areas

Advanced Statistics and Big Data;Big Bang Cosmology;Black Holes and Galaxy Structure;Cosmology;Galaxy Formation;Scientific Computing and Visualisation;Super Massive Black Holes

Further information

  • https://github.com/darrencroton

Publications

Also published as: Croton, Darren; Croton, D.; Croton, D. J.; Croton, Darren J.
This publication listing is provided by Swinburne Research Bank. If you are the owner of this profile, you can update your publications using our online form.

Recent research grants awarded

  • 2023: The many lives and deaths of high redshift massive quiescent galaxies *; ARC Future Fellowships
  • 2022: Simulating and characterising the generalised performance of muon detectors *; mDetect Pty Ltd
  • 2021: Project Schedule No.8 ARDC Data Retention Project Phase 2 - GWDC *; Astronomy Australia Limited
  • 2020: CE200100008: ARC Centre of Excellence for Dark Matter Particle Physics (Prof. Elisabetta Barberio, University of Melbourne) *; ARC Centre of Excellence Scheme
  • 2019: All Sky Observatory (ASVO) TAO 5.0 (Phase 2) *; Astronomy Australia Limited
  • 2019: Gravitational Wave Data Centre *; Astronomy Australia Limited
  • 2019: Installation of YandaSoft on the OzSTAR supercomputer *; Astronomy Australia Limited
  • 2018: Strategic supply chain design and optimisation for advanced manufacturing (Student) *; Australian Mathematical Sciences Institute Intern Program
  • 2017: ARC Centre of Excellence for All Sky Astrophysics in 3 Dimensions *; ARC Centre of Excellence Scheme
  • 2017: Project to support the Astronomy Data and Computing Services under the Astronomy NCRIS Program *; Astronomy Australia Limited
  • 2016: gSTAR Data Management and Collaboration Platform (Variation 2 to Support Operations of gSTAR) *; Astronomy Australia Limited
  • 2015: The Australian European Southern Observatory Positioner (AESOP) *; ARC Linkage Infrastructure and Equipment Scheme - For funding commencing in 2015
  • 2014: ANDS/NeCTAR eResearch Infrastructure Project, Theoretical Astrophysical Observatory (TAO) *; Astronomy Australia Limited
  • 2012: All-Sky Virtual Observatory: Theoretical Astrophysical Observatory (TAO) Node and Skymapper Node *; National eResearch Collaboration Tools and Resources (NeCTAR)
  • 2010: Staffing Agreement (Astronomy Position) *; The Australian National University

* Chief Investigator