Overview of the Astrophysics Group
The group has six full time permanent members of academic staff, all of whom are listed on the staff page. The academic staff are involved in a wide range of research and teaching.
Six members of the academic staff in Applied Mathematics are involved in research in theoretical astrophysics, and we work closely with members of that department. We also collaborate with members of academic staff in Chemistry.
The major areas of our research are listed on the research page. Our undergraduate programme is described on our teaching page. We attract postgraduate research students from all over the UK and a diverse range of foreign countries including Chile, China, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Spain, the USA, and Vietnam.
The academic and research staff come from several British counties and countries including Yorkshire, Cornwall, Scotland, and Wales as well as from India, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, and the USA. We were educated and have worked in some of the most respected academic institutions in the world before establishing our own international-class, independent programmes in Leeds. Our academic and research staff members have spent time at Harvard, Cambridge, Oxford, University College London, Imperial College London, Manchester, the University of Chicago, Edinburgh, and different Max Planck Institutes.
We collaborate with and are frequently visited by friends and colleagues, including former students, from some of these and similarly excellent institutions. We travel extensively to maintain these collaborations and to facilities all over the world.
The facilities we use are based in space, the UK, Spain, Chile, Australia, South Africa and Hawaii. They include optical and infrared telescopes and arrays of radio, millimetre, and submillimetre telescopes, which we have employed to investigate star formation, active galactic nuclei, circumstellar matter and stellar evolution, nearby galaxies, and the distribution of matter on cosmological scales. We gain time on X-ray satellite observatories to analyse gas at temperatures of ten to a hundred million degrees in superwinds and colliding winds. We also use space-borne instruments to observe infrared emission in star forming regions. Our theoretical work covers many of the same areas as our observational efforts but also encompasses other areas, some of which are listed on the research page.
Many of us play very active roles in the STFC, the research council that funds most UK research in Particle Physics and Astrophysics. We have considerable input into the establishment of the priorities of future projects and programmes.
Occasionally we have time to relax.