Personal website of Simon Birrer

I am a cosmologist using observations of our Universe to answer fundamental questions in physics. I am an Assistant Professor at Stony Brook University and a member of the Astronomy and Cosmology Group.

My scientific expertise is the interface between the exquisite data sets available on one side and the fundamental theory predictions on the other side. I am actively developing advanced computational and statistical tools and am an advocate for open-source and reproducible science.

Before joining Stony Brook, I was a Kavli Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and a Postdoctoral Scholar at University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I received my PhD at ETH Zurich.

I am the current co-chair of the LSST Strong Lensing Science Collaboration (SLSC), serve on the Collaboration Council of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC).

Find out more about my research, teaching, software development and outreach on this website. For research opportunities, visit our group page. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with me!

A simulation of light rays emitted by a distant galaxy that are gravitationally bent around an intervening object acting as a gravitational lens. The result is a highly distorted image known as an Einstein ring.