Professor Romeel Davé is a leading researcher in numerical studies of galaxy evolution, the intergalactic medium, large-scale structure, reionization, and cosmology.
Davé obtained his MS in physics from the California Institute of Technology, and his PhD in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was awarded a Lyman Spitzer Postdoctoral Fellowship at Princeton, and in 2000 received a Hubble Fellowship at the University of Arizona. In 2003, he was hired as an assistant professor at Arizona, and obtained tenure in 2009. He took up the DST/NRF Research Chair at the University of the Western Cape in January 2013.
Some of his career highlights include writing the world’s first parallel hydrodynamics code for galaxy formation; and developing the first cohesive model for the evolution of the intergalactic medium.
Davé has over 140 publications with 12 000 citations, and is involved in numerous major international observational and theoretical projects using the Hubble Space Telescope, MeerKAT, and other telescopes. He is co-investigator on various major international survey teams, including the Cosmic Assembly Near-infrared Deep Extragalactic Legacy Survey, the largest project ever done using the Hubble, and Laduma, a top-priority, 5 000-hour MeerKAT program to study neutral hydrogen (HI) evolution across cosmic time.
He co-produced the 35-minute, prize-winning documentary Hubble’s Diverse Universe, showcasing the lives and science of nine minority American astrophysicists who use the Hubble. He is currently co-producing a full-length documentary called Black Sun about the 2012 solar eclipses.
He frequently receives invitations to review/plenary talks on a wide range of subjects, including lecturing at the prestigious Jerusalem Winter School. He also received a CAREER award from the US National Science Foundation, the most prestigious award given to a junior faculty.