Gregory B. Poole is a postdoctoral lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. He received his PhD in astronomy from the University of Victoria in 2006. His research focuses on observational cosmology projects including the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey. He has significant experience supervising graduate students, teaching, public outreach, and presenting his work at conferences.

1. Gregory B. Poole
Contact Information
Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing
phone:
+61 3 9214 5301
Swinburne University of Technology
fax:
+61 3 9214 8797
Mail H30, Box 218
email:
gpoole@astro.swin.edu.au
Hawthorn, Victoria, 3122
Australia
Current position
Postdoctoral lecturer (academic level B) at Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Australia
Postgraduate employment history
Swinburne University of Technology, Hawthorn, Victoria, Australia
July 2007 - present
• Postdoctoral research associate; member of the WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey team
• Supervisor: Prof. Warrick Couch
Education
University of Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
September 1999 - December 2006
• Recipient of a PhD in Astronomy
• Graduated with a perfect grade point average (GPA) of 9/9.
• Supervisor: Prof. Arif Babul
University of Toronto, Ontario, Canada
September 1998 - August 1999
• Recipient of a Master of Science in Astronomy
• Supervisor: Prof. Charles Dyer
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
September 1992 - April 1997
• Recipient of a Bachelor of Science in Honors Applied Physics, Co-op
• Supervisor: Prof. Michel Fich
Awards
• Governor General’s Gold Medal
2007
• R.M. Petrie Memorial Fellowship
2001
• University of Victoria Fellowship
2000-2001
• R.M. Petrie Memorial Fellowship
2000
• University of Victoria Fellowship
1999-2000

2. I. Technical proficiencies
1.
Primary programming languages: C and python. Experience with C++ and FORTRAN.
2.
Extensive research experience with the observational astronomy software packages IRAF,
DAOPHOT, Source EXtractor, 2DFDR and runz.
3.
Four years of experience writing, debugging and running distributed (ie. MPI-enabled)
software on large (1000+ core) Linux clusters. Rudimentary (but growing) knowledge of
the PGAS implementation of UPC.
4.
Nvidia-certified training in GPGPU optimization using Cuda.
5.
Author of a coherent and shareable code repository of ~73,000 lines of (nearly-fully)
MPI-enabled and partly (but gradually ever-more) Cuda-enabled code capable of:
• Initializing large N-body/hydro simulations
• Generating halo catalogs with all imaginable properties and profiles
• Generating clustering statistics including power spectra and auto correlation functions
• Building merger trees from particle simulations
• Rendering images and movies of simulations of any size up to IMAX resolution.
• Performing Bayesian analysis using MCMC methods.
II. Teaching experience
1.
I am formally involved as co-supervisor of 2 graduate students at Swinburne: Peter Jensen
(principally supervised by Warrick Couch) and Simon Mutch (principally supervised by
Darren Croton). Simon has published 1 paper with myself as co-author.
2.
I am (or have been) informally involved in the co-supervision of 4 other graduate students at
Swinburne: Andy Green (author of the October 7th, 2010 cover-story for Nature; graduated
with a PhD and now employed by the AAO), Emily Wisniowski (1 paper published, 1
to be submitted imminently), Carlos Contreras (1 paper submitted), and Max Bernyk.
I am co-author on all papers.
4.
In collaboration with Dr. Darren Croton, I have instigated and chaired (for the past 2
years) a highly attended (~70% of the department) weekly literature review session.
5.
Extensive experience with classroom lecturing and marking as a result of being:
• A weekly tutorial instructor for engineering physics classes (>100 students) while an
undergraduate at Waterloo. Recipient of a distinguished TA award.
• A weekly lab instructor throughout my PhD studies. Duties included lecturing to
continuing class sizes of ~20 science majors. Recipient of a distinguished TA award.
• An essay marker for the Swinburne Astronomy Online (SAO) program1
6.
Extensive experience with public-outreach lecturing through:
• 2 years experience running public observatory tours while an undergraduate at Waterloo.
Conducted weekly lectures and star parties for groups of ~50 school children.
• Instigating, designing and teaching (for 2 years) a continuing education course as an
undergraduate at Waterloo.
• Extensive experience conducting star parties throughout my PhD studies.
1 Besides the supervision of graduate students, this has been the only teaching opportunity made available
to me while employed at Swinburne.

3. III. Professional commitments and affiliations
1.
I am formally a member of four observational survey teams:
• The WiggleZ Dark Energy Survey (PI: Drinkwater); AAT-AAOmega spectroscopic
observations of ~200,000 UV selected galaxies.
• Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey (CANDELS; PI:
Faber); a very high redshift multi-wavelength study of deep HST imaging fields.
CANDELS is the largest single allocation of observing time in HST’s history and will
measure statistically robust and complete samples of galaxies down to 109 solar masses
out to z ~ 8.
• Dynamics of Newly Assembled Massive Objects (DYNAMO; PI: Glazebrook); IFU
observations (primarily AAT-Spiral but some WiFeS, Keck OSIRIS and GEMINI NIFS
observations) of both low and high redshift Hα-emitting galaxies.
• Wallaby (PIs: Koribalski and Staveley-Smith); the planned HI all-sky survey to be
conducted with ASKAP upon commissioning.
2.
Australian National Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (ANITA) Steering Committee
March 2010 - present; twice elected
3.
Swinburne Telescope Allocation Committee for Keck (STACK)
June 2008 - August 2009
4.
Member of The Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA)
2008 - present
5.
Member of the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA)
2001 - present
IV. Invited colloquia and prominent team science talks (last 2 years)
• Stanford University (CANDELS theory working group meeting); November, 2011.
• University of Melbourne (Melbourne-area CAASTRO meeting); October, 2011.
• University of Leiden (Netherlands); August, 2011.
• Monash University; May, 2011.
• University of Western Australia; February, 2011.
• University of Leicester (UK); January, 2010.
• Bonn University (Germany); January, 2010.
• University of Victoria (Canada); December, 2009.
• University of Waterloo (Canada); December, 2009.
• McMaster University (Canada); December, 2009.
V. Conference presentations (last 2 years)
• The Wallaby “Simulations Fest” Meeting (AAO); November, 2011.
• Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA) General Meeting (Tasmania); July, 2010.
• Australian National Institute for Theoretical Astronomy (ANITA) General Meeting
(UWA); February, 2011.
• Synergistic Surveys of the Southern Sky (Swinburne); July, 2010.
• ANITA General meeting (Swinburne); Feb, 2010.
• ASA General meeting (University of Melbourne); July, 2009.