Payton Rodman

Data Scientist and Researcher

Biography

Hi, I’m Payton!

I am a data scientist with a background in physics simulations and a love for effective data communication. I believe that the data we collect, analyse, and disseminate contains a multitude of stories based on our audience’s perceptions, lived experiences, and needs. This belief underlies my approach to presentations–and information sharing more broadly–as story-telling. I am also an avid puzzler, problem-solver, and bug finder, and am always searching for new ways to improve my coding craft.

Before moving to the UK, I studied physics and applied mathematics at the University of Tasmania in Australia, where I received my Bachelors (2017) and Honours (2018) degrees. In 2024, I was awarded my PhD in Astronomy from the University of Cambridge, supported by the Gates Cambridge Scholarship.

You can find a PDF copy of my CV here: Download my CV

You can also check out some of my projects below!

Interests

Science
Programming
Simulation
Data Analysis
Presentation
Succulents

Education

PhD in Astronomy, 2024
University of Cambridge
BSc (Hons) in Physics, 2018
University of Tasmania
BSc in Physics and Applied Mathematics, 2017
University of Tasmania

Projects

Evolution of the Magnetic Field in High- and Low-β Disks with Initially Toroidal Fields

A brief look at the first half of my PhD

Radio Jet Filament Formation in a Magnetised Medium

A brief look at the second half of my PhD

Analysing student anxiety and math performance

A personal project exploring how anxiety among social science students affects perceptions of achievement and outcomes in math

Classifying plant disease status with CNNs

Comparing simple models vs pretrained.

Comparing daily pressure variation across the globe

A personal project exploring worldwide pressure variation data.

Converting meeting times between timezones

A tiny personal project to help me never miss a meeting!

Using radio lobes to measure galaxy cluster properties (Honours thesis)

A brief description of the work I did in 2018 as part of my Honours thesis at the University of Tasmania.

The spectral signature of interstellar scintillation

A project I undertook in the summer of 2016/2017 with CSIRO in Perth, WA.

Extreme scattering events

A short side-project to my work at CASS

Environment as a cause of radio source asymmetry

An analysis of AGN jet properties in different clustering environments.

Selected Publications

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Magnetic Field Evolution in Black Hole Accretion Disks and Relativistic Jets

Supermassive black holes (SMBHs) catalyse change in their host galaxies, mediated through the inflow and subsequent outflow of material …

P E Rodman

PDF Project Project DOI

Magnetic Field Evolution in Black Hole Accretion Disks and Relativistic Jets

Evolution of the Magnetic Field in High- and Low-β Disks with Initially Toroidal Fields

We present the results from a pair of high-resolution, long-timescale ($\sim10^5~{\rm GM/c^3}$), global, three-dimensional …

P E Rodman, C S Reynolds

PDF Code Project DOI

Evolution of the Magnetic Field in High- and Low-β Disks with Initially Toroidal Fields

Radio Galaxy Zoo: observational evidence for environment as the cause of radio source asymmetry

We investigate the role of environment on radio galaxy properties by constructing a sample of large ($\gtrsim~100$ kpc), nearby …

P E Rodman, R J Turner, S S Shabala, J K Banfield, O I Wong, H Andernach, A F Garon, A D Kapińska, R P Norris, L Rudnick

PDF Project DOI

Radio Galaxy Zoo: observational evidence for environment as the cause of radio source asymmetry

Probing Intracluster Gas with Faraday Rotation from Black Hole Jets

This thesis presents an analysis of the effectiveness of Faraday Rotation and its associated measures in helping to constrain the …

P E Rodman

Probing Intracluster Gas with Faraday Rotation from Black Hole Jets