Where you are now:
You happen to have come across the homepage of Nadia L. Zakamska.
Where I am now:
I am a professor of astrophysics and the Vice Chair for Academics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University.
Before I came to JHU in 2011, I was a research associate at Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at SLAC/Stanford University and a five-year member at the Institute for Advanced Study. I got my Ph. D. in Astrophysics from Princeton University in 2005.
Yu-Ching Tony Chen, postdoctoral researcher (PhD from UIllinois, 2023), 2023 - present: integral-field unit observations of quasars, discovery and characterization of dual quasars; our papers
Yuzo Ishikawa, graduate student 2019 - present; quasar evolution working on quasar feedback, our papers
Gautham Adamane Pallathadka, graduate student 2022 - present, double-degenerate binaries, our papers
Nicole Crumpler, graduate student 2023 - present, white dwarf equation of state
Nadiia Diachenko, graduate student 2022 - present, analysis of integral field unit data to study galaxy evolution
Swetha Sankar, graduate student 2022 - present, analysis of integral field unit data to study galaxy evolution
Stefan Arseneau -- undergraduate student, 2022 - present, co-advising with Vedant Chandra, equation of state of white dwarfs
Kieran M Manjrawala -- undergraduate student, 2023 - present, co-advising with Gautham Adamane Pallathadka, compact binaries
Ashwin Narayanan -- undergraduate student, 2023 - present, co-advising with Nicole Crumpler, massive white dwarfs
Postdoctoral researchers and senior personnel:
Andrey Vayner, postdoctoral researcher (PhD from UCSD, 2019), 2019 - 2024; observations of quasar-driven winds, especially at high redshifts; our papers, now postdoctoral fellow at Caltech
Caroline Huang, postdoctoral researcher 2019 - 2020 (PhD from JHU, 2019), primary supervisors Roeland van der Marel and Nora Luetzgendorf -- stellar dynamics of nearby galaxies and M-sigma relationship; now postdoc at Harvard / SAO
Rogemar Riffel, Associate Professor at Universidade Federal de Santa Maria, sabbatical visitor 2019-2020, supermassive black holes and feedback from active nuclei. We have many papers and projects in collaboration, here is an interesting paper on how to identify active galaxies with molecular outflows
Ai-Lei Sun (Ph.D. 2016 from Princeton), collaborator since 2013, postdoc 2017 - 2018, quasar ionization and feedback, now in commercial data science, our papers
Dominika Wylezalek (Ph.D. 2014 from ESO / LMU), postdoctoral researcher 2014 - 2017, Akbari-Mack Fellow (2015-2017), JHU Provost's Fellow (2016-2017), now Group Leader at the University of Heidelberg (2020 - present), our papers
Guilin Liu (Ph.D. 2011 from UMass), postdoctoral researcher 2011-2014; now faculty at the University of Science and Technology of China (2016 - present); our papers (including a series of papers on IFU studies of quasar-driven winds)
In addition, I am collaborating with (and have papers with) CAS postdoc David Nataf. Previously I collaborated with CAS postdocs Kate Rowlands [now faculty at STScI], Jorge Barrera-Ballesteros [now faculty in Mexico] and Guangtun Zhu [now in finance].
Ph.D. thesis students:
Hsiang-Chih Hwang, graduate student, 2016 - 2021, our papers on binary stars, their lifetime, their evolution and their metallicity [Gardner Fellow, Spring - Summer 2018]; now a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton)
Kirsten Hall, graduate student 2014 - 2020, quasars and large-scale structure in CMB data (joint project with T. Marriage) [Winner of the Best Student Speaker award, Penn State neighborhood cosmology meeting, April 2016; winner of the NRAO student observing support fellowship, Fall 2018; selected participant in the 2019 Lindau Meeting] our paper on downsizing and our paper on the SZ effect; now SMA and Schmidt Fellow at Harvard / SAO
Rachael Alexandroff, collaborator and graduate student 2012 - 2017, demographics of high-redshift quasars and quasar feedback at peak galaxy formation epoch [Winner of the Best Student Speaker award, Penn State neighborhood cosmology meeting, April 2013], Ph.D. July 2017, JHU; our papers, after graduation: Canadian Research Fellow at the University of Toronto; now data scientist for New York City Government
Graduate students on rotation projects (if over two semesters or common papers):
Zhicheng He, visiting graduate student, 2017 - 2018, our paper on morphology of AGN ionization, now faculty in China
Erini Lambrides, graduate student 2015 - 2017, infrared spectra and photometry of active galaxies, our paper
Joseph Cleary, undergraduate student 2014 - 2016, graduate student Fall 2016, galactic dynamics [2016 Kerr Memorial Prize], co-author of two publications resulting from this research
Undergraduate students (if over two semesters or common papers):
Yiqi Andrew Liu -- undergraduate student, 2021 - 2023, co-advising with Hsiang-Chih Hwang, cataclysmic variables, our paper, now PhD student in Princeton Physics
Brandon Stride -- undergraduate student, 2020 - 2022, co-advising with Hsiang-Chih Hwang, young stellar objects, now in an MSc program in Engineering at JHU
Gavin Fezenko, undergraduate student, 2020 - 2021, quadruple stellar systems (co-advised with Hsiang-Chih Hwang), our paper, now in aerospace industry
Vedant Chandra, undergraduate student, 2018 - 2021, our papers; modeling of white dwarf atmospheres [recepient of the 2019 Dean's Undergraduate Research Award] (co-advised with Hsiang-Chih Hwang); now graduate student at Harvard
Evan Petrosky, undergraduate student, 2019 - 2021, our paper on stellar variability in WISE (co-advised with Hsiang-Chih Hwang), now graduate student at UMich
Ross Dempsey, undergraduate + Masters + post-Masters student, 2017 - 2019, our papers on theoretical modeling of photo-ionized regions in quasars and on physical conditions in the Orion Nebula outflow [2019 Kerr Memorial Prize]; now graduate student in Princeton
Sandy Yuan, undergraduate student, spring 2016 (co-advised with Michael Strauss), now grad student at Harvard, our paper on the largest sample of optically selected type 2 quasars
Asa Stahl, undergraduate student 2015 - 2017, ionized gas in MaNGA survey [2017 Provost's Undergraduate Research Award], Ph.D. in Astrophysics from Rice, now a science writer
Michael Kelly, undergraduate / M.A. student 2015/16 (co-advised with Dominika Wylezalek), active galaxies in MaNGA survey [Recipient of the 2015/16 Provost's Undergraduate Research Award], now at APL, co-author of two publications based on his research
Kelly Lampayan, undergraduate student 2013-2015, star formation in quasar host galaxies [Recipient of the 2014 Dean's Undergraduate Research Award, 2015 Kerr Memorial Prize], now at APL, our paper
Peranat Dayananda, undergraduate student 2014-2015, high energy emission of quasar winds, M.Sci. in Comp. Sci. from Brown, now software engineer
Georges Obied, undergraduate / M.A. student 2014-2015, modeling of scattered light in quasars [Recepient of the 2014 Provost's Undergraduate Research Award, 2015 Kerr Memorial Prize], Ph.D. in Physics at Harvard,, now postdoc at Oxford, our papers
Matthew Hill, undergraduate student 2012-2014 and current collaborator [Recipient of the 2012 Dean's Undergraduate Research Award and the 2012 Provost's Undergraduate Research Award]; M.Sci. in Astronomy from Yale (2016), now in public health management; our papers
I am a co-director of JHU CARE, the Center for Astrophysics Research Experience program for undergraduates. Summer internships 2017 - present in my group:
Summer 2023: Ronald Garcia (co-advisor: Yuzo Ishikawa)
Summer 2022: Stefan Arseneau, Eric Ding, Andrew Liu, Antonella Macoretta, Kyle Schneider, Katherine Song, Brandon Stride (co-advisors: Hsiang-Chih Hwang, David Nataf, Vedant Chandra)
Summer 2020: Mansha Kapur, Gavin Fezenko, Devon Williams, Kyle Schneider, Carsten Langholm, Brandon Stride, Matt Kleiman, Felix Yu, John Magardino (co-advisors: Hsiang-Chih Hwang, David Nataf, Caroline Huang, Vedant Chandra); paper submitted
Summer 2019: Shuchen Zhang (co-advisor: Hsiang-Chih Hwang)
Summer 2018: Katherine Xiang (co-advisor: Dr. Nataf) [2020 Kerr Memorial Prize]; paper submitted
Summer 2017: Channa Luke and Anthony Flores (co-advisod Dr. Wylezalek), Wenzer Qin (co-advisor Dr. Nataf) [2019 Kerr Memorial Prize; 2019 APS Leroy Apker Prize shortlist], Xuanyi Wu (co-advisor Dr. Rowlands); two papers submitted
* I am working on unusual products of stellar evolution, stellar variability, young stellar objects and planet formation. We are using Gaia, WISE and TESS data, as well as pursuing theoretical ideas.
* In this context, I am interested in multi-wavelength surveys and data mining and in teasing out rare objects from large datasets, and in physical modeling of these objects.
* I am also continuing my previous projects in observational extragalactic astronomy, on topics that can be broadly summarized as evolution of massive galaxies and their supermassive black holes.
* Specifically, my group, my collaborators and I have studied Active Galactic Nuclei at all wavelengths and all redshifts. We were among the first to discover and characterize galactic winds powered by accretion onto black holes -- an important phenomenon that shaped the cosmic evolution of massive galaxies.
* I maintain active interest in observational and theoretical astrophysics across a wide range of topics.
* Some of our ongoing research projects are listed here, and more are available for interested graduate and undergraduate students (feel free to contact me; email is best).
is presented here, and I didn't have to lift a finger to make that happen, so I gratefully acknowledge the work of the AcademicTree folks, and I greatly enjoyed learning about my tree.
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