Institute for Computational Cosmology

The Institute for Computational Cosmology (ICC) is a Research Institute at Durham University, England. It was founded in November 2002 as part of the Ogden Centre for Fundamental Physics, which also includes the Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology (IPPP). The ICC's primary mission is to advance fundamental knowledge in cosmology. Topics of active research include: the nature of dark matter and dark energy, the evolution of cosmic structure, the formation of galaxies, and the determination of fundamental parameters.

The current director of the ICC is Carlos Frenk; the deputy director is Shaun Cole. ICC researchers have played a central role in the development of the standard model of cosmology, Lambda-CDM model (ΛCDM). Because of the vast scale of questions in cosmology, advances often require supercomputer simulations in which a virtual Universe is allowed to evolve for 13.8 billion years from the Big Bang to the present day. The simulation is rerun with different ingredients or different physics, until it matches the observed Universe. This approach has required one of the most powerful supercomputers for academic research in the world, the “Cosmology Machine (COSMA)” as part of the DiRAC supercomputing consortium.

Durham University's extragalactic astronomy group was founded in the late 1970s, and secured in 1984-5 with the appointments of Carlos Frenk, Richard Ellis, and Tom Shanks. A group researching theoretical cosmology grew steadily during the 1980s and 1990s, mainly funded by the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC). A dedicated building for theoretical cosmology was then funded through private donations, principally from alumnus Peter Ogden, and opened in 2002 by the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. The group has grown in these new facilities, and the ICC now hosts more than 60 researchers, including theoretical and observational cosmologists, as well as astroparticle physicists. Although the ICC is strictly speaking a theoretical institute, theory and observations in cosmology are intimately interwoven. Uniquely amongst Durham University's Research Institutes, the ICC and IPPP are structurally integrated within an academic and teaching department, Physics. The physics department as a whole was awarded grade 5A in the 2001 Research Assessment Exercise (RAE) carried out by the UK government, with the international excellence of research in Astronomy and Particle Physics specifically highlighted. The department's research in Space Science and Astrophysics was rated as number one in Europe and fourth in the world by Thomson Reuters from its Essential Science Indicators (1998–2008).