Welcome!

Dr. Alex Gough

Cosmologist and physics/maths teacher

Pronunciation: /ˈæləks gɒf/ (like 'cough' with a /g/)

Hi! I'm Alex Gough, and I'm interested in physics, mathematics, and teaching. I recently completed my PhD at Newcastle University, studying how the largest structures in the Universe form. I will be qualifying to teach in secondary schools in England at Reading University on the Physics with Mathematics PGCE as an IOP Scholar in 2024-2025.

I'm on the job market for positions at starting around summer 2025. In particular I'm interested in teaching based positions in sixth form colleges (16-18) teaching A-level physics and (further) maths in the south of England.  If you are hiring, or know of relevant positions, please get in touch and have a look at my CV!

I'm interested in outreach, teaching, and science communication, and enjoy making novel visualisation of complex topics. My scientific research focused on cosmology, dark matter, and the large-scale structure of the Universe.

Teaching and education work

I'm interested in education in a very general sense, and love getting hands on experience teaching and working with people. I've taught in formal settings including 11-18 schools in both the UK and the USA, university lectures and problems classes, and done individual subject tutoring, but I've also worked in more informal educational settings including a science museum, at a summer camp, and martial arts classes. I've worked with children as young as 2.5, taught things from introductory reading and arithmetic up to university level physics, and helped prepare students for internationally recognised Taekwon-do gradings.

I'm currently working as a Postgraduate Teacher at Newcastle University, supporting courses for undergraduates across mathematics and physics. I've taught courses from years 1-3 of the undergraduate degree, as well as supervised individual student projects (4th year MMath projects and 3rd year BSc projects).

Academic background

My scientific research focused on dark matter dynamics in the non-linear regime, as well as using and developing new statistical techniques for extracting cosmological information. I worked in both the theoretical cosmology and observational astronomy groups at Newcastle University with my supervisor Cora Uhlemann.

I received my master's degree in  theoretical and mathematical physics from Oxford University after starting on the physics undergraduate course. During my master's I took courses on general relativity, cosmology, quantum field theory, galactic dynamics, radiative processes, group theory, and differential geometry.

Art and Science

I'm interested in science as a human endeavour, and how the communication of science can benefit from and interface with different media such as storytelling and art. More recently I've been reconnecting with the visually artistic side of things, and have been trying to produce both visualisations in a scientific sense (see some examples in the animations gallery) as well as working with more traditional artistic media inspired by the scientific work I'm thinking about (such as the thread weaving shown on the right). Eventually some of these things will make their way onto this website. I also enjoy writing for different audiences, and previously was an author for the Astrobites collaboration.