a photograph of Storm, a white person with short ginger hair, holding a camera in front of some rolling hills.

Storm Colloms

they/them

Welcome! I'm Storm, a third year PhD student at the Institute for Gravitational Research at the University of Glasgow, working on gravitational wave astrophysics. In particular my work focuses on using gravitational wave data and machine learning techniques to understand the origins of stellar mass black holes and how their progenitors evolved.

I am passionate about science communication, outreach, and working towards making science more equitable. I am always on the lookout for people who I can help make academia a better place with. Outwith science, I am also fond of photography, pottery and cats.

an illustration of 2 wizards walking along the horizon with a binary star system spilling flecks down to them.

Research

a line illustration of a binary black hole merger by storm. the black holes are spiralling into each-other while swirls and blankets and waves are tossed between and around them.

PhD - Inferring the origins of compact objects (University of Glasgow, October 2022 to Present)
My research involves understanding the population of black holes born from massive stars, comparing gravitational wave data to simulations of millions of these binaries to learn more about how they formed. Through seeing how changes in the input physics effect the resulting parameters of black hole mergers, these population synthesis simulations can help constrain the uncertainties of binary evolution. I use a type of machine learning called a normalising flow to emulate population synthesis models and rapidly evaluate the outcomes of many simulated binary populations. Want to learn more about constraining black hole astrophysics with normalising flows? Read my paper. Want to learn more about how to use normalising flows? Check out this tutorial I developed to learn how to train your own normalising flow.

Master's Project (University of Edinburgh)
I worked on statistically analysing quasar variability, and modelling this variability as shot noise. I compared these models to data from observations of thousands of quasars, and found evidence for multiple timescales of variability present in quasar accretion disks. I made a Twine-based hypertext story based on my project, which you can read here!

LIGO SURF 2021 (Caltech)
I worked on improving the search methods for finding gravitationally lensed gravitational waves. Gravitational lensing can create multiple images of gravitational waves, which can hide some of these signals behind the noisy data, but no credible lensed events have been found yet (correct as of 2024)! I imposed a condition to constrain the search to the sky location of a super-threshold event, as the images will come from approximately the same place in the sky. I wrote an astrobite on my work which you can read here!

Other (University of Edinburgh, University of Tokyo)
I have also looked at exoplanet transits; identifying planetary mass objects via photometric analysis; and dynamical formation of planetary systems with tides using N-body code.

Outreach

An animation of a compact binary in blue orbiting a super massive black hole on the upper plot, and on the lower, a representation of the gravitational wave produced by the compact binary. The frequency and amplitude of the gravitational wave increase as the binary moves towards us and decrease as the binary moves away on either side of the orbit.

I'm involved in a few outreach efforts and collaborations, some local, some global, some detailed below:

Astrobites author and editor (January 2023 to 2025)
Astrobites is a worldwide collaboration of graduate students that summarises recent puplications in astrophysics into bite-size articles, written for an undergraduate level. You can check out the articles I've written here.

LIGO magazine illustartor (January 2023 to Present)
LIGO Magazine is a biannual publication by the LIGO Scientific Collaboration which details the latest research, news and fun events across the community. Since Issue 22 I have been an illustartor on the magazine editorial commitee. You can find recent magazine issues here.

Humans of LIGO curator (January 2023 to Present)
Humans of LIGO is an initiative which celebrates individuals of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration, profiling a personal bio of the diverse array of LIGO members and contributors. The blog is hosted here.

Photography

I am an amateur photographer, taking pictures of things I see, places I travel, and my friends. I've been using a digital mirrorless camera since 2019 in conjunction with a 35mm film camera since 2020, often stomping around cities and up hills with both. Below is a mix of film and digital photographs I have taken over the past few years.

Contact

s.colloms.1@research.gla.ac.uk