Dr. Michael J. Keith
Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics
Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester
Biography
Michael Keith is a Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics within the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Manchester and a researcher at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics. Prior to his appointment at Manchester, he completed his doctoral studies at Jodrell Bank and held a postdoctoral fellowship with CSIRO (Australia Telescope National Facility) in Australia.
Research Interests
My research focuses primarily on observational radio astronomy, with specialization in pulsar physics and high-time-resolution signal analysis.
- Pulsar Astronomy & Timing: Precision timing of radio pulsars, millisecond pulsars, and relativistic binary systems to test fundamental physics.
- Gravitational Wave Detection: Utilizing pulsar timing arrays (such as the European Pulsar Timing Array or the MeerKAT Pulsar Timing Array, both part of the International Pulsar Timing Array) to search for low-frequency gravitational waves.
- Astronomical Software Development: Designing data analysis tools and software packages (e.g., candidate selection algorithms) used across radio telescope surveys to detect and process transient signals.
Software links
- Tempo2 – pulsar timing package
- run_enterprise – command-line interface to ENTERPRISE for pulsar noise and gravitational-wave analysis
- PSRCHIVE – pulsar data archive analysis library
- DSPSR – digital signal processing for pulsar astronomy
- psrcelery – 2-D Gaussian Process modeling for pulsar variations
Professional Affiliations & Activities
- Member: Royal Astronomical Society (RAS)
- Member: Institute of Physics (IOP)
- Collaborator: Active contributor to international radio astronomy initiatives, including pulsar surveys on major facilities such as MeerKAT and the Jodrell Bank Observatory.