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I'm Marcus Lower, an Australian/Canadian astrophysicist.

Currently, I am based at Swinburne University's Centre for Astrophysics and Supercomputing, where I am studying the links between puslars, their ultra-magnetised cousins called magnetars, and powerful explosions of radio light that can be seen from half-way across the Universe. This research is funded by a prestigious Discovery Early Career Research Award (DECRA) from the Australian Research Council.

I also have interests in the general properties of pulsars, rotating neutron stars that emit beams of electromagnetic radiation from their magnetic poles. In particular, using Bayesian inference and pulsar timing techniques to model the properties of pulsars observed by radio telescopes. These include observations taken by the MeerKAT telescope, an SKA pathfinder located in South Africa, the Murriyang radio telescope at the CSIRO's Parkes Observatory (AKA "The Dish"), and the upgraded Molonglo Observatory Synthesis Telescope (UTMOST).

Prior to my current position, I worked as a postdoc at the CSIRO's Australia Telescope National Facility under the guidance of Dr Simon Johnston. Here, I took over as principle investigator of the Parkes Young Pulsar Array (AKA, the P574 project), to study the long-term stability of pulsar emission and spin-down behaviours of of a large sample of young pulsars. I completed my PhD in 2022 at Swinburne and the CSIRO's Space and Astronomy division under the supervision of Prof Matthew Bailes, Dr Ryan Shannon and Dr Simon Johnston. The focus of my thesis was on improving our understanding of the magnetospheric and rotational properties of radio pulsars. I completed a Bachelor of Science degree at Monash University, graduating with first class honours in astrophysics and applied mathematics. My honours thesis focused on detecting the signature of orbital eccentricity during the inspiral of binary black holes seen by a future, fully upgraded LIGO. Significant eccentricity is a potential signature of dynamical binary black hole formation in dense stellar evironments such as globular clusters or galactic nuclei.

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