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
The Velocity Field Olympics: assessing velocity field reconstructions with direct distance tracers
Stiskalek, R., Desmond, H., Devriendt, J., Slyz, A., Lavaux, G., Hudson, M. J., Bartlett, D. J., Courtois, H. M.
1 Jan 2026, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 545, 2, 24p., staf1960
Research output: Article
2025
Renzo's rule revisited: A statistical study of galaxies' baryon-dark matter coupling
Ko, E., Yasin, T., Desmond, H., Stiskalek, R., Jarvis, M. J.
2 Dec 2025, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 544, 4, p. 4288-4305, 18p.
Research output: Article
Testing the local supervoid solution to the Hubble tension with direct distance tracers
Stiskalek, R., Desmond, H., Banik, I.
1 Oct 2025, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 543, 2, p. 1556-1573, 18p.
Research output: Article
syren-baryon: analytic emulators for the impact of baryons on the matter power spectrum
Kammerer, L., Bartlett, D. J., Kronberger, G., Desmond, H., Ferreira, P. G.
26 Sep 2025, In: Astronomy and Astrophysics. 701, 13p., A284
Research output: Article
The CosmoVerse White Paper: Addressing observational tensions in cosmology with systematics and fundamental physics
Di Valentino, E., Said, J. L., Riess, A., Pollo, A., Poulin, V., Gómez-Valent, A., Weltman, A., Palmese, A., Huang, C. D., Bruck, C. v. d., Saraf, C. S., Kuo, C. Y., Uhlemann, C., Grandón, D., Paz, D.,
1 Sep 2025, In: Physics of the Dark Universe. 49, 263p., 101965
Research output: Article
Consistencies and inconsistencies in redshift-independent distances
Desmond, H., Nájera, J. A.
1 Aug 2025, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 541, 2, p. 671–686
Research output: Article
MIGHTEE-HI: the radial acceleration relation with resolved stellar mass measurements
Vărăşteanu, A. A., Jarvis, M. J., Ponomareva, A. A., Desmond, H., Heywood, I., Yasin, T., Maddox, N., Glowacki, M., Maksymowicz-Maciata, M., Piña, P. E. M., Pan, H.
23 Jul 2025, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 541, 3, p. 2366–2392
Research output: Article
SYREN-NEW: Precise formulae for the linear and nonlinear matter power spectra with massive neutrinos and dynamical dark energy
Sui, C., Bartlett, D. J., Pandey, S., Desmond, H., Ferreira, P. G., Wandelt, B.
28 May 2025, In: Astronomy and Astrophysics. 698, May, 19p., A1
Research output: Article
Challenges to a sharp change in G as a solution to the Hubble tension
Banik, I., Desmond, H., Samaras, N.
1 May 2025, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 539, 2, p. 1553-1561, 9p.
Research output: Article
On the consistency of rotation curves and spatially integrated H I flux profiles
Yasin, T., Desmond, H.
1 May 2025, In: Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 539, 3, p. 2110-2120, 11p.
Research output: Article