Christian Kragh Jespersen

Christian Kragh Jespersen

PhD Candidate in Astrophysical Sciences

Princeton University

Department of Astrophysical Sciences

Biography

I am a 3rd-year PhD Candidate working at the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University advised by Peter Melchior and David N. Spergel. I work on applying Machine Learning and new statistical methods to astrophysics, preferably where they have never been tried before. My main astrophysical interests are extragalactic, but I am widely interested in almost all areas of astronomy. My thesis will focus on constructing a link between low-dimensional representations made from dark-matter only cosmological simulations and observed galaxy spectra.
I am currently affiliated with multiple research groups including the Astro Data Lab, led by Peter Melchior, and the Cosmology x Data-science group at the Flatiron Institute led by Shirley Ho.

I am currently a member of the Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) spectroscopic survey collaboration, the Learning the Universe (LtU) collaboration and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST-DESC).

Originally from Denmark, I obtained my Bachelor’s degree from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen in 2021, with a thesis on Neutrino Detection in IceCube.

Currently, I can be found in the infamous graduate student basement in Peyton Hall in Princeton, or at the Center for Computational Astrophysics (CCA) in New York City.

I am very passionate about showing our wonderful universe to the public, and I frequently lead the public observing nights at Peyton Hall, and I give outreach talks at Astronomy On Tap Trenton.

Outside of academia, I like rock climbing, gardening and all kinds of surfing. I even like gardening so much that I have ended up being the coordinator of my local community garden.

Interests
  • Machine Learning
  • Galaxy Evolution
  • Transients
  • Spectroscopy
  • Cosmology
Education
  • PhD in Astrophysicical Sciences, 2026

    Princeton University

  • MA in Astrophysicical Sciences, 2023

    Princeton University

  • BSc in Physics, 2021

    University of Copenhagen

Research

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Recent and Upcoming talks

(that I remember)

Publications

I would never keep everything here up to date, so instead look at the amazing NASA/ADS service. Some times, web services track my name as “Kragh Jespersen, Christian”, sometimes as “Jespersen, Christian Kragh” (which is the correct form), and sometimes as “Jespersen, Christian K.”, so I recommend using the above link to get correct results.

Contact

Please reach out to me if you have any questions regarding science or general academic life, as well as if something on this site is not working. Here are some ways of doing so. Thank you!