Greg L. Bryan

I am a theoretical and computational astrophysicist. My research focuses on understanding how cosmic structure forms and evolves — from the first stars in the universe, to the formation of galaxies like our own, to the hot gas in massive galaxy clusters. Much of this work uses large numerical simulations that follow dark matter, gas, stars, and black holes across cosmic time, with particular attention to the circumgalactic and intergalactic medium that fuels and regulates galaxy growth.

I direct the Simons Collaboration on Learning the Universe, which combines cosmological simulations with machine learning and Bayesian forward modeling to infer the initial conditions and physical laws of the universe from observations.

I am one of the original developers of Enzo, an open-source adaptive mesh refinement (AMR) code for astrophysics and cosmology, and contribute to its successor Enzo-E and the Grackle chemistry and cooling library.

Before joining Columbia, I received my B.Sc. in physics from the University of Calgary and my Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and held a faculty position in physics at Oxford University. I have been a Hubble Fellow and a Lyman Spitzer Fellow, and received an NSF CAREER award and the Leverhulme Trust Prize.

A full list of my publications is on NASA/ADS; selected papers are below.