Welcome to my research page.


I am currently a postdoc at the Institute for Cosmology and Gravitation of the University of Portsmouth. In September 2008 I completed my PhD at the Institute for Astronomy of the University of Edinburgh, under the wise supervision of Professor Alan Heavens.


I’m interested in the problem of recovering physical parameters from galaxies’ spectra, SNIa progenitors, the mass assembly in galaxies, large-scale structure and galaxy evolution, as well as non-Gaussianity in the CMB.


If you’re looking for VESPA’s database, please look here.

If you’re looking for LRG colour tracks evolution, please look here.


Last 5 refereed or submitted publications (full list from ADS here - papers not yet public usually available by request) :


  1. Bullet K. L. Masters et al. 2011, MNRAS (in print), “The morphology of galaxies in the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey.

  2. Bullet A. J. Ross, S. Ho, A. J. Cuesta, R. Tojeiro et al., 2011, MNRAS, 417, 1350, “Ameliorating Systematic Uncertainties in the Angular Clustering of Galaxies: A study using SDSS-III”

  3. Bullet R. Tojeiro, W. Percival, 2011, MNRAS, 417, 1114. “Disentangling star formation and merger growth in the evolution of Luminous Red Galaxies.”

  4. Bullet SDSS-III Collaboration, 2011, ApJS, 195, 26. “The Eighth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Data from SDSS-III”.

  5. Bullet D. J. Eisenstein et al. 2011, AJ, 142, 72. “SDSS-III: Massive Spectroscopic Surveys of the Distant Universe, the Milky Way Galaxy, and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems”.


Prizes and awards:

  1. Bullet Royal Astronomical Society Michael Penston Prize 2008; runner up - for best doctoral thesis in Astronomy or Astrophysics submitted to a UK institution.

  2. Bullet Royal Society of Edinburgh Cormack Postgraduate Prize 2007 - for best paper in Astronomy submitted by a PhD student in Scotland.

  3. Bullet Emerson Prize 2004 - for best in class, MPhys Astrophysics, University of Edinburgh.


Last 5 academic talks (longer list here):

  1. Bullet 28 Sep 2011: Nottingham University, Seminar: “Tracking coeval galaxies across cosmic times.”

  2. Bullet 25 March 2011: BOSS meeting, Cloudcroft, New Mexico: “Identifying coeval galaxies over redshifts and across surveys”

  3. Bullet 11 Jan 2011: Institute for Astronomy, Edinburgh, Coffee talk: “SDSS, DR8 and BOSS

  4. Bullet 25 Oct 2010: IPMU, Japan, BOSS collaboration meeting: “The evolution of massive galaxies

  5. Bullet 15 June 2010: ICG, Portsmouth, VIPERS collaboration meeting: “The descendants of VIPERS galaxies in low-redshift surveys


Outreach and education work:

I’m heavily involved in outreach and the public communication of science, via public talks, hands-on activities, workshops for schools and teachers and anything else I can think of - get in touch if you think I can help your school or community centre. I’m also an author in the Astronomy blog we are all in the gutter, and I piloted an Astronomy videocast called Our Universe, which sadly I had to let go due to lack of time.


Last 5 public talks or events (longer list here):

  1. Bullet 14 November 2011: Cafe Scientifique, Isle of Wight: “Mapping the Universe”

  2. Bullet 19 and 20 July 2011: Imperial College London: Exo-planets workshop and guided visit to ROG (STEM World summer schools)

  3. Bullet 4 and 11 July 2011: Springfield Technology College: Faulkes Telescope sessions.

  4. Bullet 10 May 2011: Springfield Technology College: “Comets - snowballs in space”.

  5. Bullet 09 Mar 2011: Havant College: “A day in the life..”



Collaborators (2 common publications or more, excluding collaboration papers):

Alan Heavens (6)

Will Percival (5)

Raul Jimenez (4)

Michael Strauss (3)

Éric Aubourg (2)

Ben Panter (2)

Ashley J. Ross (2)

Stephen Wilkins (2)

 

Rita Tojeiro