Dr Matt Jarvis

MPhys (Birmingham), DPhil (Oxford), FRAS

Matt Jarvis

Job title: Reader in Astrophysics and UK Research Council Fellow

Telephone Number: 01707285251

Memberships and Appointments:

Member of the LOFAR Survey Core Team 

Member of the Square Kilometre Array International Science Working Group.

Member of the James Clarke Maxwell Telescope Time Allocation Committee.

Member of the Isaac Newton Group Science Advisory committee  

Member of the VISTA Data Flow System Review Panel.

 

I am an astrophysicist with interests in the whole of extragalactic astrophysics and observational cosmology. My research includes the effect that accreting black hole have on their host galaxies, the evolution of accretion activity over the history of the Universe and how this is linked to the star-formation history of the Universe. I am also heavily involved in developing the science case for the next generation of radio telescopes such as the Low Frequency Array and the Square Kilometre Array. I also lead one of the six public surveys to be conducted on the new VISTA near-infrared telescope.

Recent highlights include, defining a new method to measure the mass of black hole in distant quasars, and subsequently measuring the mass of the black hole in the most distant quasar in the Universe; part of the team which discovered the large missing population of obscured galaxies with the Spitzer Space Telescope. Led the first results on determining the star-formation history of the Universe with large-area integral field spectroscopy.

Research Interests

Galaxy formation and evolution; active galaxies; galaxy clusters; next generation of radio telescopes.

Teaching specialisms

Observational Cosmology

Collaborations and Projects

I am the Principal Investigator of the VISTA Deep Extragalactic Observatioins (VIDEO) survey. One of six public surveys to be carried out on the ESO VISTA telescope. VIDEO is a >200 night survey with the aims of constraining galaxy formation and evolution over the history of the Universe and as a function of environmental density.

I am the scientific leader of a narrow-band search for Lyman-alpha emitters within the epoch of reionisation with the VISTA telescope.

I am a co-investigator on three of the other VISTA public surveys, namely the Ultra-VISTA, VIKING and VHS surveys.

I am the Principal Investigator of the Spitzer-Herschel Active Galaxy survey which aims to define a benchmark sample of active galaxies which can be used to interpret survey data at mid- to far-infared wavelengths. This can then be used to monitor the build up in the relation between black hole mass and galaxy mass.

I am the chair of the international science simulations task force for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA).This telescope will provide a giant leap in our understanding of the Universe and fundamental physics. I lead the effort to define the observations which will be needed to make the biggest scientific gains. I am on the management committee for LOFAR:UK one of the SKA pathfinder experiments currently under construction in the Netherlands (click here for more information on the LOFAR project).

I am a member of the SCUBA2 cosmology survey, which is a sub-mm survey to be carried out over the areas covered by the VIDEO survey.