Bio
Kilian Hikaru Scheutwinkel is a Physics Ph.D. candidate with a specialization in astrophysics at the University of Cambridge. After completing his undergraduate degree in physics in his hometown Frankfurt am Main, Germany and his masters in astrophysics at Uppsala University, Sweden, he decided to move to the UK for his doctoral studies to further expand his international outlook.
Research interests
Kilian’s PhD research consists of analyzing cosmological datasets through Bayesian machine learning methods. The goal is to constrain the cosmological parameters during the epochs of Cosmic Dawn and the Epoch of Reionization (EoR); epochs when the universe was less than a billion years old that are still largely observationally unexplored. Upcoming large-scale radio telescopes e.g. the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) or more simply designed radio antennas such as the Cambridge-led Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen (REACH) are expected to collect unprecedented large volumes of data in the coming years.
With the help of complex statistical inference frameworks such as Bayesian inference, likelihood-free inference and nested sampling, one can analyze these datasets to deduce what the conditions during the earliest epochs of our universe are e.g. the star-formation rate and galaxy-formation rate during Cosmic Dawn. Moreover, these statistical methods are providing cosmologists with the tools to compare competing cosmological models that determine the fate of the universe, where some models predict contradicting outcomes.
Kilian’s research is involved in the development of these Bayesian algorithms to provide the data analysis tools that cosmologists need to conduct modern cosmological research.