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Dr Philippa Cole

Philippa

Lecturer in Applied Artificial Intelligence

Email: p.s.cole@qmul.ac.uk
Room Number: G.O. Jones Building, Room 415

Profile

I am a lecturer on the Applied Artificial Intelligence BSc programme at Queen Mary, and my research is within the Astronomy Unit.

 

Previously, I did my PhD in Physics at the University of Sussex (2016-2020) under the supervision of Dr Christian Byrnes, I was a postdoctoral researcher at GRAPPA, University of Amsterdam (2020-2023) and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Milan-Bicocca (2023-2026).

 

I work on dark matter and gravitational waves from both theoretical and data analysis perspectives.

Research

Research Interests:

My research focuses on using gravitational waves as a probe of the dark sector of the universe. I work on both theoretical and data analysis aspects of extracting fundamental physics information from next-generation gravitational wave data including LISA, Einstein Telescope, and Cosmic Explorer.

 

I am particularly interested in formation and detection scenarios for dark matter particles and fundamental fields surrounding extreme mass ratio inspirals - pairs of black holes where one is much larger than the other - and primordial black holes, tiny black holes that could have formed in the very early universe.

 

You can find a list of my publications here.

 

Collaborations

 

I am a core member of the LISA Consortium, and I co-chair the Square Kilometre Array Observatory (SKAO) gravitational waves working group with Nicola Bellomo.

Publications

  • P. S. Cole, J. Alvey, L. Speri, C. Weniger, U. Bhardwaj, D. Gerosa, G. Bertone, Sequential simulation-based inference for extreme mass ratio inspirals, arXiv:2505.16795.
  • P. S. Cole et al., Disks, spikes and clouds: distinguishing environmental effects on BBH gravitational waveforms, Nature Astron. 7 (2023) 943-950.
  • P. S. Cole et al., Measuring dark matter spikes around primordial black holes with Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer, Phys. Rev. D 107 (2023).
  • P. S. Cole, J. Fumagalli, pbhstat: A pip-installable code for calculating the PBH abundance, Universe 2025, 11(9), 322.
  • C. T. Byrnes, P. S. Cole, S. P. Patil, Steepest growth of the power spectrum and primordial black holes, JCAP 1906 (2019) 028.
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