I am a researcher and lecturer at the University of Birmingham, where I have been a member of academic staff since September 2022. My lecture courses include first year Introduction to Astrophysics and third year Observatory Laboratory, which gives students the chance to use the University of Birmingham Observatory at Wast Hills. I have been the Director of the Observatory since 2023. The Wast Hills Observatory is central to Birmingham’s Astronomy in the City outreach event, where visitors can hear about the research that goes on in the department and do some stargazing.
I received my PhD from the University of Leicester in 2015. The title of my PhD thesis was “The Progenitors of Extended Emission Gamma-Ray Bursts”. My PhD advisors were Professor Paul O’Brien and Professor Graham Wynn.
After my PhD, I spent two years between June 2015 and August 2017 as a postdoctoral research associate at Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, USA, where I worked with Dr Andy Fruchter. I moved to The University of Warwick in September 2017 to work with Professor Andrew Levan. I joined the Institute for Gravitational Wave Astronomy at Birmingham in April 2021 as a postdoctoral researcher in Dr Matt Nicholl‘s time domain research group. I became an Assistant Professor in the School of Physics and Astronomy in September 2022, and was promoted to Associate Professor in August 2025.
Dr Benjamin Gompertz 