Welcome
Group Research Interests
The primary goal of our research group is to understand the formation mechanisms, growth and demographics of massive black holes. Massive black holes (MBH > 10^6 Msolar) populate the centres of almost all massive galaxies but their origin is unknown.
Our group is active in using a variety of methods (analytical, semi-analytical and full numerical) to probe different aspects of this problem.
Below you can see a movie we created from Enzo simulations showing the formation of very massive objects in a high-z galaxy. It may be that very massive stars like these were the ultimate progenitors of the massive black holes we observe in galactic centres.
Our group is active in using a variety of methods (analytical, semi-analytical and full numerical) to probe different aspects of this problem.
Below you can see a movie we created from Enzo simulations showing the formation of very massive objects in a high-z galaxy. It may be that very massive stars like these were the ultimate progenitors of the massive black holes we observe in galactic centres.
Our Funders
We are extremely grateful to Science Foundation Ireland, the Royal Society and the Irish Research Council for funding our group's research
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Group Members
Dr. John Brennan
John is a postdoctoral researcher in our group working on developing the exascale class code Enzo-E. John's focus is on using Enzo-E to run large scale simulation modelling early Black Hole formation
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/john-brennan
John is a postdoctoral researcher in our group working on developing the exascale class code Enzo-E. John's focus is on using Enzo-E to run large scale simulation modelling early Black Hole formation
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/john-brennan
Hannah O'Brennan
Hannah O'Brennan
Hannah is a third year PhD student in our group. Hannah's research is on trying to predict the number density of massive black holes (or massive black hole hosting haloes) in the Universe. She achieves this both through sophisticated analytical models and hydrodynamical simulations.
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/hannah-obrennan
Hannah is a third year PhD student in our group. Hannah's research is on trying to predict the number density of massive black holes (or massive black hole hosting haloes) in the Universe. She achieves this both through sophisticated analytical models and hydrodynamical simulations.
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/hannah-obrennan
Joe McCaffrey
Joe is a second year PhD student in our group. Joe's research is on understanding the dynamical of massive black holes and clusters in the early Universe. Early galaxies are expected to be small in LambdaCDM and somewhat chaotic making understanding the early dynamics of massive black holes important - particular when trying to predict their merger rates for LISA.
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/joe-mccaffrey
Joe is a second year PhD student in our group. Joe's research is on understanding the dynamical of massive black holes and clusters in the early Universe. Early galaxies are expected to be small in LambdaCDM and somewhat chaotic making understanding the early dynamics of massive black holes important - particular when trying to predict their merger rates for LISA.
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/joe-mccaffrey
Saoirse Ward
Saoirse is a second year PhD student in our group. Saoirse uses a combination of high resolution dark matter only simulation and semi-analytic models to predict the demographics of massive black holes at both high redshift and low redshift.
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/saoirse-ward
Saoirse is a second year PhD student in our group. Saoirse uses a combination of high resolution dark matter only simulation and semi-analytic models to predict the demographics of massive black holes at both high redshift and low redshift.
https://www.maynoothuniversity.ie/people/saoirse-ward
Dr. Ricarda Beckmann
Dr. Ricarda Beckmann was awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions award (February 2023) and will join our group in May 2024.
https://www.kicc.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-ricarda-beckmann
Dr. Ricarda Beckmann was awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Actions award (February 2023) and will join our group in May 2024.
https://www.kicc.cam.ac.uk/directory/dr-ricarda-beckmann
Postdoctoral Researcher starting August 2023
PhD Student Starting September 2023
PhD student starting September 2023