2021 NHFP Fellows

Host Institution: Harvard University

Proposal Title: High-Cadence Radiative Transfer Modeling on Galactic Scales

Kirk Barrow was born in Houston, Texas and grew up in both the United States and Jamaica. After receiving a B.S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, he went on to receive a doctorate in physics from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Since the fall of 2018, he has been a Porat Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Palo Alto, California.

Kirk's research is in computational cosmology with an emphasis on using radiative transfer techniques to create synthetic observations of high-redshift phenomena using simulations. These include studies of star-forming galaxies, Population III stars, massive black-hole formation, emission lines and the escape fraction of ionizing radiation. Recent work has focused on time-domain studies of bursts of star formation and how emission-line signatures evolve on different time scales in response to galactic dynamics. Kirk's interests in aerospace engineering are spacecraft orbital dynamics that leverage gravity assists like those provided by the moons of Saturn to leverage feasible low-thrust solutions to hard-to-reach corners of the Solar System.

As a NHFP Hubble Fellow at Harvard University, Kirk will create predictions and comparisons for upcoming observations from the Keck Observatory and the James Webb Space Telescope, including diagnostics that leverage simulation-trained neural networks to help classify objects at the farthest edge of our observable frontier. Additionally, he will continue to look in the time-domain evolution of high-redshift astrophysical processes.

Host Institution: University of California, Berkeley

Proposal Title: The Celestial Movers and Shakers: Gas Giant Planets Provide Key Insights into the Formation Histories of Exoplanet Systems

Marta Bryan grew up in Central Oregon. She received a bachelor's degree in Astrophysics from Harvard in 2012 and a PhD from Caltech in 2018. After graduating, she started a 51 Pegasi b fellowship at UC Berkeley.

Marta's research focuses on using a wide range of observational techniques to detect and characterize gas giant planets outside the solar system. Gas giants are the easiest products of the planet-formation process to find because they are so massive that they dominate the dynamics of the systems they're in. Thus, gas giants are an obvious place to start learning about the physics of planet formation. As a Sagan Fellow at UC Berkeley, Marta will leverage relatively new observables—such as planetary spins and obliquities—to place new constraints on the physics of gas giant formation and explore the impact that Jupiter analogs can have on inner extrasolar systems.

Host Institution: Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Proposal Title: Unveiling the Local Stellar Graveyard

Kishalay De was born and raised in Kolkata, India. He obtained his Bachelor's degree in Physics from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India in 2016, before moving to Pasadena, California to attend graduate school in Astrophysics at the California Institute of Technology. He will finish his PhD under the supervision of Prof. Mansi M. Kasliwal in summer 2021.

Kishalay's research centers on using wide-field time-domain surveys to uncover poorly understood phases in the lives of compact objects in binary systems. For his thesis, he led the largest volume-limited supernova survey to date to study faint supernovae using the Zwicky Transient Facility optical time-domain survey. This work led to the robust identification of a class of helium shell explosions on accreting low-mass white dwarfs and a class of ultra-stripped supernovae that form neutron stars in compact binary systems. He led the data pipeline development for Palomar Gattini-IR, the first wide-field infrared time-domain survey, to study explosions in the dust-obscured Galactic plane. The search for infrared transients in this stream placed the strongest constraints on infrared flares from a fast radio-burst source coincident with a Galactic magnetar, and the Galactic rate of classical novae.

As an NHFP Einstein fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kishalay plans to use infrared time-domain surveys to search for accreting black holes and neutron stars in the galaxy utilizing their bright X-ray counterparts. By carrying out multi-wavelength follow-up of candidate sources, his goal is to substantially increase the known population of Galactic black holes and constrain their demographics in the Milky Way.

Host Institution: California Institute of Technology

Proposal Title: Probing the CGM-Galaxy Connection Using Multi-object Spectroscopy and Astrophotonics

Pradip Gatkine grew up in the city of Nagpur in central India. He received his Bachelor of Technology in Mechanical Engineering with a minor in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2014. He went on to graduate school in Astronomy at the University of Maryland, College Park where he was awarded the NASA Earth and Space Science Fellowship (NESSF). His thesis focused on probing the metal enrichment in the early universe and developing astrophotonic spectrographs. He obtained his PhD in 2020, advised by Profs. Sylvain Veilleux (Astronomy) and Mario Dagenais (Electrical & Computer Engineering). He has been a David & Ellen Lee fellow at Caltech since then.

The exchange of matter/baryons between the galaxies and the rest of the universe plays a crucial role in galaxy evolution. Pradip studies the relationship between galaxies and their circumgalactic medium (CGM) to unravel how the cosmic baryon cycle is driven. To boost this investigation in the future, he is developing innovative and highly miniaturized "astrophotonic spectrographs on a chip" for the next generation of ground- and space-based telescopes. Astrophotonics is the application of novel photonic technologies to coherently manipulate light from one or more telescopes to study cosmic objects, simultaneously breaking the size/cost barriers for spectrographs on the extremely large telescopes (ELTs).  

As a Hubble fellow, Pradip will develop a stackable on-chip photonic spectrograph to enable massively multiplexed spectroscopy on the upcoming ELTs, facilitating a deep mapping of the cosmic baryon cycle. With the existing spectrographs, he will measure the multi-phase composition of the galaxy-CGM ecosystem using metals as tracers of baryons. With these measurements, he will explore how the metal/baryon transport mechanisms are linked to the galaxy properties such as their mass and star-formation rate.

Host Institution: Carnegie Observatories 

Proposal Title: Star-Formation Physics from Cosmos to Cores

Mike Grudic is from Corner Brook, Newfoundland. The works of Sagan, Hawking, and Feynman inspired him to pursue science, so he set aside his aspirations in the field of heavy metal and obtained a joint BSc. in Physics and Applied Mathematics at Memorial University of Newfoundland. At Caltech he became interested in star-formation theory, writing the dissertation "The Role of Stellar Feedback in Star Cluster Formation" with Phil Hopkins.

Mike's work focuses upon the major mysteries surrounding the origins of stars: why do stars form at the rate that they do (i.e., star-formation efficiency)? Why do only a fraction of stars remain in their natal cluster, and how do these clusters assemble? Why do stars form with a particular distribution of masses (the initial mass function)? The unifying theme of his work is that feedback, the ways in which young stars influence the star-forming gas around them, can play a pivotal role.

As a Hubble Fellow at Carnegie Observatories, Mike will lead the STARFORGE project, running numerical simulations of star formation with unprecedented resolution and physical realism to help understand how feedback, gravity, turbulence, and other mechanisms influence the births of stars.

Host Institution: Princeton University     

Proposal Title: Linking ISM Physics and Galaxy Formation

Thales Gutcke was born in Bodrum, Turkey and grew up in Berlin, Germany. She received her undergraduate degree in physics from the University of Heidelberg where she designed and built astronomical instrumentation. For her PhD, she switched to theoretical and computational galaxy formation under the supervision of Prof. Andrea Macciò at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. She is currently an independent postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics (yeah, that's a different institute) in Munich working with Prof. Volker Springel.

Thales is interested in galaxies at the intersection between cosmology and star formation. She developed a novel galaxy-formation model called LYRA that simultaneously simulates the large-scale structure of the universe and the (relatively) small-scale baryonic physics of star formation and feedback. Specifically, it resolves the multi-phase interstellar medium, individual stars, and individual supernova blast waves in a cosmological context. As part of the Virgo Consortium, she is leading the creation of a new simulation suite of highly resolved dwarf galaxies that employs her model. As a Hubble Fellow, Thales will shed light on the interplay of dark matter and baryons in galactic halos through the analysis of her simulations. But she also plans to explore the formation of the smallest galaxies, clustered star formation, and early enrichment of the intergalactic medium. In her free time, Thales enjoys mountain biking and painting.

Host Institution: Carnegie Observatories

Proposal Title: The R-Process Refinery: Distilling Stellar Signatures to Characterize the Astrophysical Production Site of the Heavy Elements

Erika Holmbeck is a Los Angeles native who received her bachelor's degree in Astrophysics from UCLA. She went on to earn her PhD in Physics from the University of Notre Dame, where she was jointly advised by Professors Rebecca Surman and Timothy Beers. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Computational Relativity and Gravitation at Rochester Institute of Technology in New York working with Professor Richard O'Shaughnessy.

Erika's research combines observation with theory to investigate elemental production sites by the rapid neutron-capture (r-)process. In particular, she targets chemically simple, metal-poor stars that are enriched with the heaviest observable elements. The elements in these stars act like genetic signatures inherited from the lives and deaths of previous stellar generations, including the currently unknown ancestral events capable of hosting the r-process. Erika has utilized these observational signatures in new ways to place constraints on the most promising r-process environment: merging neutron stars. As a Hubble Fellow, she will employ her unique background of combining stellar spectroscopy with nuclear theory to tease out the chemical ancestries of metal-poor stars. In doing so, she aims to provide the observational building blocks for a "stellar" Genome Project, using it to inform our theoretical understanding both of the cosmic origin of the heaviest elements on Earth and the fundamental nature of matter.
 

Host Institution: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Proposal Title: Connecting Black Hole Shadows to Multi-Wavelength Accretion and Outflow Physics

Sara Issaoun was born in Algeria and grew up in both Canada and the Netherlands. She graduated with a bachelor's degree in physics from McGill University in 2015 and a master's degree in astrophysics from Radboud University in 2017. She is currently completing her PhD degree in astrophysics at Radboud University under the supervision of Professor Heino Falcke.

Sara is an observational astronomer and a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration. Her research centers around the collection, calibration, and imaging of millimeter-wave radio observations of supermassive black holes. Supermassive black holes generate the highest energy processes in the known universe, ejecting jets of plasma affecting galaxy environments on large scales, but their dynamics and emission mechanisms remain shrouded in mystery. She makes use of global networks of radio-telescopes to image and study the immediate surroundings of the supermassive black holes at the centers of our galaxy and the galaxy M87.

As an Einstein Fellow, Sara aims to expand millimeter-wave radio-imaging capabilities and forge strong connections between the first images of supermassive black hole shadows and physics probed by partner facilities across the electromagnetic spectrum. Currently, tests of General Relativity via black-hole imaging with the EHT are limited by astrophysical uncertainties of the surrounding accretion flow. We can sharpen these tests using panchromatic studies of these complex environments. Multi-wavelength constraints on accretion-flow properties will critically inform the scientific interpretation of images of black-hole shadows, our understanding of jet-launching mechanisms, black-hole spin measurements, and, ultimately, precision tests of General Relativity.

Host Institution: Institute for Advanced Study     

Proposal Title: Fundamental Cosmology from Galaxy Clustering

Mikhail grew up Russia. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in astronomy from Moscow State University in 2014. Then he moved to Switzerland and obtained his PhD degree from the École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) under the supervision of Sergey Sibiryakov in 2019. His PhD thesis "Precision Theoretical Methods for Large-Scale Structure of the Universe" won the EPFL distinction prize. As part of his PhD studies, Mikhail spent one year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton NJ as a fellow of the Swiss National Science Foundation. Currently, Mikhail is a postdoctoral fellow at New York University.

Mikhail's research has developed at the interface of theoretical particle physics and astronomy, bridging state-of-the-art theoretical ideas with observational data. He has created accurate first-principle theoretical models and new data analysis methodologies to extract cosmological parameters from galaxy surveys. These methodologies have many exciting applications: Mikhail has shown that the public data on the galaxy power spectrum provided, for the first time, precise measurements of the Hubble constant, the dark energy equation of state, and other properties of the universe without any input from cosmic microwave background anisotropies.

As an Einstein Fellow, Mikhail will continue developing theory and pipelines that will be able to extract accurate information from the upcoming galaxy clustering surveys. Future applications of these results and analysis techniques will be wide-ranging, from measuring dark energy and neutrino properties to constraining galaxy formation.

Host Institution: University of Massachusetts, Amherst   

Proposal Title: Revealing Optically Invisible Dusty Star-Forming Galaxies in the Early Universe

Sinclaire Manning grew up in Seattle, Washington and received bachelor's degrees in physics and Spanish from Howard University in Washington, D.C. in 2015. She is currently completing her PhD at The University of Texas at Austin as part of Prof. Caitlin Casey's research group. As a graduate student, Sinclaire was supported by an NSF GRFP award and she is set to complete her PhD in Astronomy in the summer of 2021.

Broadly interested in dust-obscured starburst galaxies, Sinclaire has utilized multiwavelength surveys, with particular focus on (sub)millimeter/radio observations, to reveal the primary formation mechanisms and evolutionary pathways of these extreme star-forming systems at high redshift.

As a NASA Hubble Fellow at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Sinclaire will use millimeter observations to detect and characterize a newfound population of optically/near-infrared invisible dusty star-forming galaxies, investigate their evolutionary connections to high-redshift quiescent galaxies, and provide new constraints on dust production in the first billion years of the universe.

Host Institution: University of Arizona, Steward Observatory        

Proposal Title: Atmospheres as Windows to the Diversity of Extrasolar Planets

Megan Mansfield grew up in Des Moines, Iowa. She received her bachelor's degree in 2016 from MIT, where she double majored in Physics and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), as well as minoring in Music. Megan is currently a graduate student of Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago, where she works with Dr. Jacob Bean and Dr. Edwin Kite. She received her master's degree in 2018 and will receive her PhD in June 2021.

Megan's research focuses on using spectroscopy of transiting exoplanet atmospheres to better understand planetary formation, physics, and chemistry. For her PhD she used Hubble and Spitzer space telescope observations to probe the atmospheric dynamics and chemistry of ultra-hot Jupiters, which are the hottest known exoplanets. She has also developed new techniques which can be used in the future to study both giant and terrestrial exoplanets with the James Webb Space Telescope. As a Sagan Fellow at the University of Arizona, Megan will continue to use both ground- and space-based observatories to study transiting exoplanets. She plans to explore a wide range of phenomena in exoplanet atmospheres, from the three-dimensional structure of ultra-hot Jupiters to the potential habitability of terrestrial exoplanets.

Host Institution: Yale University 

Proposal Title: Unveiling the Hidden Connection Between Supermassive Black Holes and Jet-Triggering Mechanisms

Lea Marcotulli was born in Perpignan, France, and grew up in Fermo, Italy. She pursued her undergraduate degree in Astronomy at Bologna University. She then joined the graduate program at Clemson University where she completed her Masters en route and will finish her PhD in Physics in May 2021, under Dr. Marco Ajello’s supervision.

Lea's research focuses on finding the most distant and massive black holes that power relativistic jets (i.e., blazars), and understanding their evolution. To do so, she uses NASA's NuSTAR and Fermi missions, and complements their observations with those of ground-based IR and optical facilities. Her works have confirmed that these jets are powered by billion solar-mass black holes and that the population density of the most powerful blazars peaks when the universe was only 1–2 billion years old.

As an Einstein Fellow, she plans to continue the chase for blazars in the early universe, as well as to precisely characterize nearby merger systems which host relativistic jets. This program will be pivotal to unveil the hidden link between fast black-hole growth and jet-triggering mechanisms.

Host Institution: Northwestern University            

Proposal Title: The Study of Hyper-Accreting Black Holes and the Origin of Gold in the Universe

Ariadna Murguia Berthier was born and raised in Mexico City and Cuernavaca, in Mexico. She received her BS in Physics from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). After that, she moved to UCSC to pursue a PhD advised by Prof. Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz and Dr. Scott Noble. 

Ariadna's research focuses on all aspects of a binary neutron star merger. She has studied the assembly of the binary through common envelope, the post-merger evolution, and the subsequent gamma-ray burst. She is interested in using numerical tools in order to understand how we can observe these extreme events, and how observations can help us understand the properties of the merger.  As an NHFP Einstein Fellow, Ariadna will continue to investigate the merger of two neutron stars by further developing general relativistic magnetohydrodynamical codes to understand the role neutrinos play in the final result of the merger. She will also study gamma-ray bursts and their observational signatures.

Host Institution: University of California, Berkeley            

Proposal Title: Gravitational Wave Cosmology Through the Eyes of Dark Energy Experiments

Antonella was born and raised in Rome, Italy. She completed her bachelor's degree in Physics and her masters in Astronomy and Astrophysics at La Sapienza University of Rome. She then moved to the United Kingdom to pursue her PhD in astrophysics at the University College London under the supervision of Professor Ofer Lahav. She is currently a postdoc at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, in Illinois.

Antonella's research is focused on large galaxy surveys, in particular the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Her main interests lay in the connection between gravitational-wave sources, galaxy evolution, and the large-scale structure of the universe. Some of her recent work includes the estimation of the expansion of the universe using gravitational-wave binary black holes and large galaxy surveys, studies on gravitational-wave sources as the central black holes of tiny galaxies, and the use of gravitational-wave sources with galaxies' peculiar velocities to test gravity. As an Einstein Fellow, Antonella will perform optical to near-infrared follow-up of gravitational-wave sources, searching for the rare electromagnetic counterparts that originate from compact-object binary mergers. She will then use these observations, in combination with galaxies' data from large sky surveys, to measure the cosmic expansion of the universe.

Host Institution: Columbia University      

Proposal Title: Towards a Fully Predictive Standard Model of Galaxy Formation

Viraj Pandya grew up in Jersey City, New Jersey and earned his bachelor's degree in Mathematics & Economics from Rutgers University in 2013. If you had asked him then what he would be doing in 2021, he would never have imagined becoming a professional astrophysicist. Through his founding of the Rutgers Astronomical Society, he met the great scientists who would later become supportive mentors and develop his passion for research. Viraj was an inaugural Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Astrophysics at Princeton, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow at UC Santa Cruz, and a Summer Research Associate and Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Flatiron Institute in New York City.

Viraj is spearheading the development of a next-generation semi-analytic model of galaxy formation whose otherwise enormous parameter space is being constrained by high-resolution numerical experiments, leading to dramatically increased predictive power. His PhD thesis presents major insights on how the energy carried by supernova-driven winds can suppress cooling of the circumgalactic medium and intergalactic medium. As a Hubble Fellow, he will revise the decades-old standard model of halo-gas accretion, cooling, and recycling using a new approach that can faithfully emulate hydrodynamical simulations. This will unlock tantalizing opportunities to interpret NASA observations of diffuse extragalactic gas in both absorption and emission throughout large volumes. Viraj's research will also lay the groundwork for marginalizing over the remaining uncertainties of baryonic physics so that galaxies can be fully leveraged as precise cosmological probes of fundamental physics (e.g., via their clustering, alignments, and intrinsic evolution as mapped by NASA).

Host Institution: Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Proposal Title: Origins: Relating Protoplanetary Disks to Planetary Atmospheres

Diana Powell grew up in Austin, Texas and received her undergraduate degree in Astrophysics and Physics from Harvard University. She moved to California for her graduate studies and will soon complete her PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz where she works with Ruth Murray-Clay and Xi Zhang.  

Diana's research focuses on understanding planet formation and evolution through characterizing planetary atmospheres and the planet-forming material in protoplanetary disks. Diana uses the microphysical processes that govern the evolution of small particles (like dust, ice, and clouds) to understand these large-scale phenomena. As a Sagan Fellow, Diana will continue her studies of exoplanet atmospheres and protoplanetary disks. Moreover, she will work to bridge these two sub-fields together to place new constraints on planet formation and evolution.

Host Institution: Southwest Research Institute    

Proposal Title: A New Paradigm for Compact Exoplanetary System Origin

Raluca Rufu was born in Bucharest, Romania, and immigrated with her family to Israel when she was 11 years old. She obtained her Bachelor's degree in physics and planetary sciences from Tel-Aviv University and her PhD in planetary science from Weizmann Institute of Science under the supervision of Oded Aharonson. Since her graduation, Raluca has been a postdoctoral researcher at Southwest Research Institute, where she works with Robin Canup.

Raluca's research to date has focused on the origin of satellites and satellite systems, and on determining how these objects can constrain planet formation and early dynamical evolution. As a Sagan fellow, she will study the formation of compact exoplanetary systems composed of Earth to mini-Neptune sized planets. These multi-planet systems have nearly circular, co-planar orbits located at small distances from the host star. Although compact systems comprise a large fraction of known exoplanetary systems, their origin remains debated. Intriguingly, compact exoplanetary systems and gas planet satellite systems share key properties, suggesting that compact-system origin may be more similar to the formation of satellites than to the accretion of our terrestrial planets.

Host Institution: University of Chicago   

Proposal Title: Internal Structure of Massive Elliptical Galaxies: The Missing Piece at the Intersection of Astrophysics and Cosmology

Anowar Jaman Shajib was born and raised in Bangladesh. Anowar moved to Japan for undergraduate studies with a full-ride scholarship from Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. He received his bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Tokyo in 2014. Afterwards, he went to the University of California, Los Angeles, where he worked with Prof. Tommaso Treu and received his PhD in astronomy and astrophysics in 2020. Since then, Anowar has been a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Chicago.

Anowar's research focuses on observational cosmology and elliptical galaxy properties using galaxy-scale strong lensing. As member of the H0 Lenses in COSMOGRAIL's Wellspring (H0LiCOW) and the STRong-lensing Insights into the Dark Energy Survey (STRIDES) collaborations, Anowar worked on measuring the Hubble constant using strong-lensing time delays. He improved old methodologies and developed new ones for strong-lens modeling, and implemented them on current data to obtain new measurements of the Hubble constant.

As an Einstein Fellow, Anowar will develop an automated pipeline to efficiently model very large samples of strong lenses, the likes of which will be discovered with upcoming facilities such as the Vera Rubin Observatory and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Using this state-of-the-art pipeline, he will analyze a large sample of galaxy-scale strong lenses from existing data to put new constraints on the evolution of elliptical galaxies, improve future strong-lensing measurements of the Hubble constant, and gain new insights into the nature of dark matter.

Host Institution: University of Wisconsin, Madison           

Proposal Title: Devoured Worlds — The Signatures of Substellar Ingestion

Melinda Soares-Furtado was raised on a dairy farm in Gilroy, California, and began her education at Gavilan Community College. She received a Bachelor of Science in physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, and a PhD in Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.

During her graduate career as a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow, Melinda searched for periodic variables in open clusters using photometric data from the Kepler/K2 Missions. She became intrigued by rapidly-rotating stars in open clusters, as well as the pathways responsible for their production. One possible mechanism is the ingestion of a substellar companion, which imparts angular momentum to the host star. To gauge the efficacy of this mechanism, Melinda investigates the chemical enrichment signatures induced by substellar ingestion events.

As an NHFP Hubble Fellow, Melinda will search for rapidly rotating, chemically peculiar variable stars in open clusters.  She will investigate the chemical tracers produced by substellar ingestion events with the aim of unambiguously detecting a substellar ingestion site. The spectroscopic analysis of such a site, particularly one found within an open cluster, will offer invaluable measurements of the bulk composition of substellar companions.

Host Institution: Texas Tech University   

Proposal Title: Unraveling the Complex Nature of Black Holes and How They Power Explosive Outflows with Time-Domain Observations

Alex Tetarenko was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. She received her BSc in Astrophysics from the University of Calgary, and she pursued graduate school at the University of Alberta, obtaining her MSc in 2014 and her PhD in 2018. Alex's PhD thesis was awarded the J.S. Plaskett Medal from the Canadian Astronomical Society for the most outstanding doctoral thesis in Canada. Following her PhD studies, Alex took up an independent fellowship at the Maunakea Observatories in Hawaii, working at the East Asian Observatory's James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, where she currently resides.

Alex's research focuses on studying relativistic jets launched from stellar-mass black hole systems in our galaxy, to understand the complex relationship between the mass plunging into a black hole and the material that is jettisoned away. The main goals of her research are to develop new ways to study jets launched from black holes, both in terms of designing observing techniques to gather new types of data, as well as building new computational and statistical tools to analyze this data.

As an Einstein fellow, Alex's pioneering research program will implement a novel time-domain technique to observe galactic black hole systems at radio wavelengths. This innovative technique, adapting algorithms used in X-ray astronomy, allows her to directly measure the physical properties of black hole jets and how they evolve through measuring how the intensity of the light we receive from these jets varies over different time-scales. With this research, she will place constraints on jet speeds, energetics, and size-scales, in turn allowing her to begin to address key open questions in jet research, such as understanding the energy source of these jets and the impact they have on their environment. This work will also provide benefits to the broader scientific community, through developing statistical techniques that can be applied to big data problems, and building new observing methods applicable for the operations and data analysis at next-generation telescopes. 

Host Institution: Cornell University          

Proposal Title: Studying Exoplanetary Magnetic Fields Using Radio and High-Resolution Spectropolarimetry Observations

Jake Turner grew up in Colorado in the small rural town of Walsenburg. He received his bachelor degrees in physics and astronomy in 2011 from the University of Arizona. As a graduate student at the University of Virginia, he was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. During his PhD, he also spent two years as a visiting student at CNRS in Orléans, France. Jake received his PhD in astronomy in 2018 from the University of Virginia, advised by Robert E. Johnson. Since 2018, he has been a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University working with Ray Jayawardhana. In addition to his research, Jake is very active in social activism, photography, outreach, and currently runs the social media of the Carl Sagan Institute.

Jake's research is focused on studying the magnetic fields, atmospheres, and orbital evolution of exoplanets. Observations of an exoplanet's magnetic field will provide valuable insights into the planet's interior structure, formation, evolution, atmospheric escape and dynamics, and possible habitability. As a Sagan Fellow, Jake plans on using low-frequency radio observations to confirm the first direct measurement of an exoplanet's magnetic field. In addition, he plans on studying dozens of close-in exoplanets searching for signs of their magnetic fields using radio and high-resolution spectropolarimetry observations. The techniques and lessons learned from this research will be directly applicable to future radio (e.g., SKA-low, Lunar Radio Array) and optical (e.g., 30-m class) telescopes.

Host Institution: Arizona State University              

Proposal Title: High-Definition Exo-Atmospheric Characterization with Transit Spectroscopy

Luis Welbanks was born and raised in Mexico. In 2011 he moved to Canada to study a double major in physics and astrophysics at the University of Calgary. There, he obtained his bachelor's degree with honors, and a master's degree with specialization in astrophysics under the supervision of Dr. Rachid Ouyed. In 2017 he was selected as a Gates Cambridge Scholar to pursue a PhD at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom under the supervision of Dr. Nikku Madhusudhan at the Institute of Astronomy.

Luis' research has focused on deciphering the atmospheric composition of planets outside the solar system by interpreting spectroscopic observations taken with ground- and space-based facilities. As a Sagan Fellow at Arizona State University, Luis will focus on developing next-generation inference frameworks, known as retrievals, to maximize the information derived from transmission spectra of exoplanets in a physically plausible way. Luis will use a combination of theoretical models and upcoming spectroscopic observations to enable high-definition exo-atmospheric characterization with transit spectroscopy. This work will provide a data-driven understanding of the model considerations needed to provide rigorous and credible estimates of exoplanet atmospheric properties.

Host Institution: California Institute of Technology           

Proposal Title: Expanding Exoplanet Demographics to Identify Key Components of Planet Formation

Jon grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He received his bachelor's degree in astrophysics from UCLA in 2014 and continued on to obtain a master's in physics from California State University, Northridge in 2016. After matriculating back to UCLA, Jon spent 2019 as an IPAC visiting graduate student at Caltech, working with Jessie Christiansen. He will earn his PhD in astrophysics and astronomy from UCLA in May 2021 under the supervision of Brad Hansen.

Jon's research focuses on the detection of new planets and the characterization of the exoplanet population. He is driven to understand what processes produce planetary systems like our own. This requires a robust comprehension of how systems evolve dynamically and the underlying formation mechanisms. By examining features in the known planet population, understanding of these physical processes can be tested. As a Sagan Fellow, Jon will continue his study of exoplanets, combining data across multiple detection techniques and surveys to maximize demographic capabilities. Moreover, he will use this mixture of data to constrain multi-planet system architectures and planet formation models.  

Host Institution: Space Telescope Science Institute           

Proposal Title: Knitting Together the Milky Way: Tracing Gas Flows in the Era of Big Data

Catherine Zucker is from Virginia and received her undergraduate degrees in astronomy-physics and history from the University of Virginia in 2015. Supported by an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship, she received her PhD in astronomy from Harvard University in 2020, working with Alyssa Goodman and Douglas Finkbeiner. She is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.

Catherine’s research focuses on characterizing the 3D structure and dynamics of our home galaxy, the Milky Way. She uses a combination of observations, simulations, data science, and data visualization to produce new models of our galaxy’s interstellar medium, with the underlying goal of generating physically motivated connections between star formation and the broader galactic environment.

As a Hubble Fellow at STScI, Catherine will leverage a new technique to "knit" together interstellar gas and dust to create 4D views of the interstellar medium capable of constraining gas flows. Specifically, she will apply a new computational approach to build the next generation 3D spatial map of dust using deep infrared photometry for billions of stars. She will then combine these new measures of the 3D spatial structure of dust with velocity-resolved spectroscopic information from gas to produce a highly resolved map of gas flows. The ultimate goal of Catherine's NHFP work will be to test gas-flow theory in diverse environments, in order to better understand the physical mechanisms driving the formation of stars and gaseous structure in our Milky Way at large dynamic range.