Bio: Dr. Shy Genel is an astrophysicist working in the field of computational galaxy formation and cosmology; he is studying how galaxies form and evolve and how they can be used to infer fundamental properties of our Universe. The main tool he employs in his research is cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, which run on supercomputers and generate digital ‘mini-universes’ that can be analyzed in ways that are not available with observational data. In recent years he has been employing machine learning models to develop novel ways to extract information from this type of simulations.
Dr. Genel received his PhD in 2011 under the guidance of 2020 Nobel Prize in Physics laureate Prof. Reinhard Genzel at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, near Munich. Between 2011-2016 he completed post-doctoral fellowships at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and at Columbia University, and in 2016 he joined the newly-founded Center for Computational Astrophysics at the Flatiron Institute (a division of the Simons Foundation), where he serves today as a Research Scientist.

Cosmological Hydrodynamical Simulations and Machine Learning at the Intersection of Galaxy Formation and Cosmology

As galaxy surveys encode a wealth of information about the basic properties of our Universe, improved modeling of galaxy formation will result in improved constraints on cosmology and fundamental physics. Cosmological hydrodynamical simulations, which follow the coupled evolution of dark and ‘normal’ matter from cosmologically motivated initial conditions, are a primary tool for studying how galaxies form. After a brief review of the revolution of the past decade in the scale and fidelity of cosmological simulations, I will discuss a new direction the field is taking in the past few years, where machine learning is opening new ways to extract cosmological information from the non-linear process of galaxy formation.

The MICDE Winter 2024 Seminar Series is open to all. University of Michigan faculty and students interested in predicting and explaining the properties of materials using computer simulation are encouraged to attend.

This seminar is cohosted by the Michigan Institute for Computational Discovery & Engineering (MICDE) and the Department of Astronomy, Dr. Genel will be hosted by Dr. Monica Valluri, Research Professor of Astronomy.

This is an in-person event.

Graduate Certificate in Computational Discovery and Engineering, and MICDE fellows, please use this form to record your attendance.