Emmy Noether Research Group Jiamin Hou

Jiamin Hou will establish a new Emmy Noether research group at the Physics Department and University Observatory of Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in January 2026. She obtained her PhD in 2020 from LMU and received a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship in 2021, hosted jointly by the Max Planck Institute and the University of Florida. She is currently a research associate at the University of Cambridge.

The group focuses on bridging the observational data and fundamental physics. In particular, the group is interested in applying higher-order statistics to galaxy data to extract cosmological information from the galaxy distribution, study the growth of cosmic structures, probe early-Universe physics, and test fundamental symmetries such as parity violation on cosmological scales.

PhD Topics

Non-Gaussianities in the Universe encode valuable information spanning from the early to the late cosmic epochs. At late times, they arise primarily from non-linear gravitational interactions, which provides information about growth of cosmic structure. At early times, they may originate from beyond-standard inflationary models, providing a window into fundamental physics in the early Universe.

This PhD project will focus on applying higher-order statistics to galaxy survey data in order to extract cosmological information beyond traditional two-point statistics. Using data from upcoming large-scale surveys such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), Euclid, and the Roman Space Telescope, the project will develop and apply modelling and data analysis techniques. These efforts will provide further information on the growth of cosmic structures, offer insights into the physics of the early Universe, and probe fundamental symmetries on cosmological scales, including possible signatures of parity violation.