Affiliation: Institute of Theoretical Astrophysics, University of Oslo
Contact: h.k.k.eriksen@astro.uio.no
Research interest
My research aims to detect primordial gravitational waves created during the Big Bang.
According to current theories, this signal represents fluctuations of no more than one part in
100 million of the general background. A potential detection therefore requires extreme
precision in terms of astrophysical, instrumental and computational precision.
To solve this problem, our group has implemented one of the most comprehensive cosmological Monte Carlo Markov Chain samplers in the world, and applied it to state-of-the-art cosmological data sets. Preparing this code for next-generation satellite experiments will require exascale efficiency, and this is the main goal of the current project.
Short bio
After defending my PhD in 2005, I worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of
Theoretical Astrophysics (ITA), University of Oslo, although I spent a large fraction of my
time at Jet Propulsion Laboratory (Caltech/NASA) as a visiting researcher. In 2009, I was
hired as an associate professor at ITA/UiO, and in 2011 I was promoted to professor. In 2012
I was a Leverhulme visiting professor at University of Oxford.
Since 2002, I have worked on a wide range of internationally leading cosmology
experiments, including COMAP, PASIPHAE, Planck, QUIET and SPIDER. I have been Principal Investigator for two ERC grants (one Starting Grant and one Consolidator Grant), as well as one H2020 COMPET-4 project called BeyondPlanck.
The defining feature throughout my career has been a strong focus on computational
methods and tight interaction between state-of-the-art statistical methods, high-performance computing and detailed data analysis.
Supervisor for the following CompSci project
-
Astronomy
- Massive parallelization of end-to-end CMB analysis codes (available in call 1)