Minh Nguyen is a cosmologist and a Leinweber Research Fellow at the Leinweber Center for Theoretical Physics, Department of Physics, University of Michigan. Minh studies how millions of galaxies are distributed across the universe, specifically the hierarchical pattern and structure in their distribution, to better understand gravity, dark matter and dark energy. While gravity pulls everything, including dark matter—the invisible matter that makes up more than 25% of our universe—together, dark energy—the mysterious energy that makes up almost 70% of our universe—tend to push space and everything apart. Studying the clustering and clumpiness of galaxies and matter therefore provide key insights into their nature. More about Minh’s research can be found on his homepage.

Minh taught MMSS last year as a guest lecturer and is very excited to teach it again this year as a main lecturer. He is further a Science Communication Fellows at the UM Museum of Natural History. Minh received his PhD in Astronomy from the IMPRS-Astro program at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich for his work at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics. Before that, he received his MSc in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the AstroMundus program.