Biography

Joe is a DiRAC Postdoctoral Fellow working to understand the active small bodies of the outer solar system through ground-based photometry and population-level simulations.His PhD at Queen’s University Belfast focused on preparing for the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory – modeling how many objects like Centaurs and Neptune Trojans will be detected over the coming decade, and what degree of physical characterisation will be possible for them. Now, with Rubin seeing first light, he is building on that groundwork with real LSST data and exploring synergies with existing survey efforts.Alongside synthetic populations, he is equally interested in studying real objects too. He has examined a range of bodies, from comets to Centaurs to dwarf planets, using wide-field survey photometry from ATLAS and ZTF, as well as targeted follow-up from facilities including LCO, the INT, and the Liverpool Telescope. 

Through all of this, Joe aims to better understand the physical processes shaping small bodies today, and the evolutionary pathways that will define them for years to come.