Dr Harry Desmond
Biography
I joined the ICG as a Senior Research Fellow in January 2022, supported by a Royal Society URF. Before that I was a McWilliams Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University, and before that a Junior Research Fellow at St John's College, Oxford. I obtained my PhD from Stanford University in 2017.
Research interests
I am interested primarily in developing new tests of the standard model of cosmology (gravity and/or dark sector physics) using astrophysical objects, mainly galaxies and stars. My work ranges from pure theory, through N-body and hydrodynamical simulations to statistical data analysis. I am also interested in galaxy formation and how best to characterise the relation between galaxies and their host dark matter halos.
Research outputs
2026
Disentangling modified gravity and galaxy bias with field-level inference
Hoyland, S., Saadeh, D., Koyama, K., Desmond, H.
28 Sep 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society
Research output: Article
Testing subhalo abundance matching with galaxy kinematics
Boreiko, F., Yasin, T., Desmond, H., Stiskalek, R., Jarvis, M. J.
1 Sep 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 551, 3, 16p., stag1549
Research output: Article
Symbolically regressing dark matter halo profiles using weak lensing
Martín, A., Yasin, T., Bartlett, D. J., Desmond, H., Ferreira, P. G.
1 Sep 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 551, 1, 22p., stag1394
Research output: Article
Constraints on the gravitational potential from DESI DR2 BAO and its implications for the local void scenario
Banik, I., Nájera, J. A., Desmond, H.
5 Aug 2026, In: Universe. 12, 8, 35p., 235
Research output: Article
The subtle statistics of the distance ladder: On the distance prior and selection effects
Desmond, H., Stiskalek, R., Nájera, J. A., Banik, I.
1 Aug 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 550, 2, 14p., stag1144
Research output: Article
The functional form of galaxy and halo luminosity and mass functions
Ford, A., Desmond, H., Bartlett, D. J., Ferreira, P. G.
1 Aug 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 550, 4, 25p., stag1333
Research output: Article
Forward-modelling Milky Way Cepheids: selection effects and physical priors in the Gaia–HST calibration
Stiskalek, R., Riess, A. G., Desmond, H., Lavaux, G., Scolnic, D.
1 Aug 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 550, 3, 28p., stag1272
Research output: Article
Improved constraints on modified Newtonian gravity from Cassini radio tracking data
Park, R. S., Hees, A., Famaey, B., Desmond, H., Durakovic, A.
28 Jul 2026, In: Physical Review D. 114, 2, 14p., 024066
Research output: Article
Cosmological dipole in tilted anisotropic universes
Martín, A., Skordis, C., Bartlett, D. J., Desmond, H., Ferreira, P. G., Yasin, T.
10 Jul 2026, In: Physical Review D. 114, 2, 12p., 023526
Research output: Article
Constraining fifth forces using the local distance ladder: Implications for the Hubble tension
Högås, M., Mörtsell, E., Desmond, H., Riess, A.
7 Jul 2026, In: Physical Review D. 114, 2, 15p., 023519
Research output: Article