Prof Simon Driver

Honorary Professor

Email: spd3@st-andrews.ac.uk

Teaching

Since joining St Andrews Simon has developed much of the extra-galactic astrophysics programme including: Observational Cosmology (4th year), Galaxies (3rd year), Nucleosynthesis and the Chemical evolution of the Universe (2nd year), and Galaxies and Cosmology (1st year), and has also taught courses prepared by other staff members on: Galactic Astronomy (2nd year), Observation Techniques (2nd year), and Observational Astrophysics (3rd year lab). As Director of the Observatory Simon developed the undergraduate Observer Training course and oversaw the outreach campaign which included: Observatory open nights, planetarium visits to local schools, tours of the St Andrews' Observatory, and the physics and maths contributions to the STEM astronaut programme.

Research areas

Simon Driver is primarily involved in the design and production of major extragalactic surveys, and is the principal investigator of the Millennium Galaxy Catalogue (MGC) and the Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA) surveys.

He was previously a member of the Hubble Space Telescope Medium Deep Survey (HST MDS), and the two-degree field Galaxy Redshift Survey (2dfGRS) which was awarded the RAS prize for group achievement in 2008.

Simon's current research is focussed on the evolution of mass, energy, and structure (1kpc-100Mpc scales) from the epoch of reionisation (i.e., 0.5Gyrs after the Big Bang) until the present day. The GAMA survey in particular is breaking new ground by providing the most extensive catalogues to date of the filamentary structure of the Universe, galaxy group associations, galaxy bulge-disc decompositions, and the total energy outputs (UV-radio) of individual systems based on a sample of 250,000 galaxies. The GAMA sample is based on spectroscopic observations from the Anglo-Australian Telescope and supporting imaging observations from three space missions (GALEX, WISE and Herschel), four ground-based telescopes (SDSS, VST, UKIRT, VISTA), and two radio interferometers (GMRT, ASKAP - currently under construction in Western Australia).

GAMA is very much focussed on the nearby Universe however future surveys are likely to include Euclid and JWST to extend our understanding of mass, energy and structure to earlier times.

Selected publications

Open access

Measuring cosmic density of neutral hydrogen via stacking the DINGO-VLA data
Chen, Q., Meyer, M., Popping, A., Staveley-Smith, L., Bryant, J., Delhaize, J., Holwerda, B. W., Cluver, M. E., Loveday, J., Lopez-Sanchez, A. R., Zwaan, M., Taylor, E. N., Hopkins, A. M., Wright, A., Driver, S. & Brough, S., Dec 2021, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 508, 2, p. 2758-2770 13 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

FLASH Early Science – discovery of an intervening HI 21-cm absorber from an ASKAP survey of the GAMA 23 field
Allison, J. R., Sadler, E. M., Bellstedt, S., Davies, L. J. M., Driver, S. P., Ellison, S. L., Huynh, M., Kapińska, A. D., Mahony, E. K., Moss, V. A., Robotham, A. S. G., Whiting, M. T., Curran, S. J., Darling, J., Hotan, A. W., Hunstead, R. W., Koribalski, B. S., Lagos, C. D. P., Pettini, M., Pimbblet, K. A. & Voronkov, M. A., May 2020, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 494, 3, p. 3627-3641
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): a forensic SED reconstruction of the cosmic star formation history and metallicity evolution by galaxy type
Bellstedt, S., Robotham, A. S. G., Driver, S. P., Thorne, J. E., Davies, L. J. M., Lagos, C. D. P., Stevens, A. R. H., Taylor, E. N., Baldry, I. K., Moffett, A. J., Hopkins, A. M. & Phillipps, S., Nov 2020, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 498, 4, p. 5581-5603 23 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

Galaxy and mass assembly: luminosity and stellar mass functions in GAMA groups
Vazquez-Mata, J. A., Loveday, J., Riggs, S. D., Baldry, I. K., Davies, L. J. M., Robotham, A. S. G., Holwerda, B. W., Brown, M. J., Cluver, M. E., Wang, L., Alpaslan, M., Bland-Hawthorn, J., Brough, S., Driver, S. P., Hopkins, A. M., Taylor, E. N. & Wright, A. H., Nov 2020, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 499, 1, p. 631-652 22 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

ASKAP commissioning observations of the GAMA 23 Field
Leahy, D. A., Hopkins, A. M., Norris, R. P., Marvil, J., Collier, J. D., Taylor, E. N., Allison, J. R., Anderson, C., Bell, M., Bilicki, M., Bland-Hawthorn, J., Brough, S., Brown, M. J. I., Driver, S., Gurkan, G., Harvey-Smith, L., Heywood, I., Holwerda, B. W., Liske, J., Lopez-Sanchez, A. R., McConnell, D., Moffett, A., Owers, M. S., Pimbblet, K. A., Raja, W., Seymour, N., Voronkov, M. A. & Wang, L., 2019, In: Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia. 36, 19 p., e024.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

From the far-ultraviolet to the far-infrared – galaxy emission at 0 ≤ z ≤ 10 in the shark semi-analytic model
Lagos, C. D. P., Robotham, A. S. G., Trayford, J. W., Tobar, R., Bravo, M., Bellstedt, S., Davies, L. J. M., Driver, S. P., Elahi, P. J., Obreschkow, D. & Power, C., Nov 2019, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 489, 3, p. 4196–4216
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): the sSFR-M* relation part I - σ_sSFR-M* as a function of sample, SFR indicator, and environment
Davies, L. J. M., del P. Lagos, C., Katsianis, A., Robotham, A. S. G., Cortese, L., Driver, S. P., Bremer, M. N., Brown, M. J. I., Brough, S., Cluver, M. E., Grootes, M. W., Holwerda, B. W., Owers, M. & Phillipps, S., Feb 2019, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 483, 2, p. 1881–1900 20 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): time-scales for galaxies crossing the green valley
Phillipps, S., Bremer, M. N., Hopkins, A. M., De Propris, R., Taylor, E. N., James, P. A., Davies, L. J. M., Cluver, M., Driver, S. P., Eales, S. A., Holwerda, B. W., Kelvin, L. S. & Sansom, A. E., Jun 2019, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 485, 4, p. 5559–5572
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): environmental quenching of centrals and satellites in groups
Davies, L. J. M., Robotham, A. S. G., del P. Lagos, C., Driver, S. P., Stevens, A. R. H., Bahé, Y. M., Alpaslan, M., Bremer, M. N., Brown, M. J. I., Brough, S., Bland-Hawthorn, J., Cortese, L., Elahi, P., Grootes, M. W., Holwerda, B. W., Ludlow, A. D., McGee, S., Owers, M. & Phillipps, S., Mar 2019, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 483, 4, p. 5444–5458 15 p.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
Open access

Galaxy And Mass Assembly (GAMA): defining passive galaxy samples and searching for the UV upturn
Phillipps, S., Ali, S. S., Bremer, M. N., De Propris, R., Sansom, A. E., Cluver, M. E., Alpaslan, M., Brough, S., Brown, M. J. I., Davies, L. J. M., Driver, S. P., Grootes, M. W., Holwerda, B. W., Hopkins, A. M., James, P. A., Pimbblet, K., Robotham, A. S. G., Taylor, E. N. & Wang, L., 19 Dec 2019, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. In press, stz3552.
Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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