About me

Bio/academic background

Hi! I'm Alex Gough (pronounced like 'cough' with a /g/), 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.

My 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 with my supervisor Cora Uhlemann.

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

Teaching and education

I'm currently working as a Postgraduate Teacher at Newcastle University, supporting courses for undergraduates across mathematics and physics. I've supported courses across both maths and physics from years 1-3 of the undergraduate courses, and supervised a 4th year MMath project. I'm currently supporting year 1 astrophysics, calculus, and algebra (for physicists), and will be supporting year 3 physics BSc projects next term.

Beyond my scientific interests, 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 like schools and tutoring, but also in 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.

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.

String art related to my work on dark matter dynamics and caustics. The structure of such systems is highly analogous to systems in optics. Understanding this correspondence lead to my first first-author paper. You can find an animated version of this piece in the animations gallery.

Applying physics in a rather literal way. This was one of the breaks required for my 4th Dan grading (jumping reverse turning kick).

Me and some members of OUTKD at International Instructor's Course and Technical Seminar.

Taekwon-do

I've been training in ITF Taekwon-do since 2004 and am a 4th degree black belt and international instructor. Taekwon-do was the first place I started teaching, working with both the childrens' classes and adults.

Unfortunately I haven't been able to continue training as much as I'd like since the pandemic, but hopefully I'll find a way to soon.

Other interests

Outside of physics I enjoy baking (mostly breads but lots of other things too), board games and TTRPGs, and have an amateur interest in linguistics of both natural and constructed languages (though I am disappointingly monolingual). I love cats, science fiction, generally being outside, and have recently been trying my hand at various cloth/fibre crafts.

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