Department of Physics and Astronomy · Aarhus University
Associate Professor of Astronomy studying supernovae, cosmic transients, and Type Ia supernova cosmology.
I study cosmic transients to understand stellar explosions, progenitor systems, and the use of supernovae as precision cosmological tools.
Rapid observations in the first hours to days after explosion provide direct probes of progenitor structure, circumstellar material, radioactive mixing, and explosion physics. My programmes have helped establish early-phase supernova observations as a central diagnostic for linking transients to their progenitors.
I contribute to precision Type Ia supernova calibration through photometric calibration, light-curve modelling, intrinsic-colour relations, and high-quality data sets from the Carnegie Supernova Project. I founded and lead the Aarhus–Barcelona cosmic FLOWS project, which is assembling a large nearby near-infrared SN Ia sample to map peculiar velocities and trace the local dark-matter distribution.
My work on interacting supernovae constrains progenitor mass loss through multi-wavelength observations. Recent studies of SN 2016adj in Centaurus A used Hubble Space Telescope light echoes and optical/near-infrared spectroscopy to probe the dust and circumstellar environment of a nearby stripped-envelope supernova.
I have led and contributed to data releases and methods for Type Ia, Type II, and stripped-envelope supernovae, including reddening-estimation methods, light-curve analysis, spectroscopic classification and age-dating approaches, and homogeneous observational samples for population studies.