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
Jack Neustadt, Miller Postdoctoral Fellow (PhD from OSU, 2024), 2024 - present: candidate super-Eddington quasars
Gautham Adamane Pallathadka, graduate student 2022 - present, double-degenerate binaries, our papers
Nicole Crumpler, graduate student 2023 - present, white dwarf equation of state
Mingrui Ray Liu, graduate student 2024 - present, single-galaxy strong lensing
Postdoctoral researchers and senior personnel:
Andrey Vayner (PhD from UCSD, 2019), postdoctoral researcher 2019 - 2024; observations of quasar-driven winds, especially at high redshifts; our papers, now postdoctoral fellow at Caltech
Caroline Huang (PhD from JHU, 2019), postdoctoral researcher 2019 - 2020, 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 have closely collaborated with (and have papers with) CAS postdocs David Nataf [now faculty at UIowa], Kate Rowlands [now faculty at STScI], Jorge Barrera-Ballesteros [now faculty in Mexico] and Guangtun Zhu [now in finance].
Ph.D. thesis students:
Yuzo Ishikawa, graduate student 2019 - 2024; quasar evolution, dual quasarsour papers, now a postdoc at MIT
Hsiang-Chih Hwang, graduate student, 2016 - 2021, our papers on binary stars, their lifetime, their evolution and their metallicity [Gardner Fellow, Spring - Summer 2018]; after graduation -- a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), now in finance
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 with common papers:
Swetha Sankar, graduate student 2022 - 2024, shock signatures of quasar feedback, our paper
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
Other students on rotation projects:
Nadiia Diachenko (2022 -- 2024), Carlos Anicetti (2019 -- 2020), Qinan Wang (2018), Omnarayani Nayak (2012-2013), Mohammad Safarzadeh (2012-2013), Zhilei Xu (2012), Ting Su (2011) -- students on rotation projects
Before JHU, supervised graduate students Xin Liu (our paper, and we remain close collaborators), Reinabelle Reyes and Joshua Green (our paper), and Laura Gomez (our paper) on pre-thesis projects.
Undergraduate students (if over two semesters or common papers):
Stefan Arseneau -- undergraduate student, 2022 - 2024, co-advising with Vedant Chandra, equation of state of white dwarfs, our paper, now PhD student at Boston University
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:
Spring 2024: Kieran M Manjrawala, Ashwin Narayanan (co-advised with Gautham Adamane Pallathadka and Nicole Crumpler)
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 maintain active interest in observational and theoretical astrophysics across a wide range of topics, from planet formation to cosmology.
Winds launched by processes near supermassive black holes play a key role in galaxy evolution -- for example, they are thought to limit the maximal stellar mass of galaxies in the universe -- but they have long evaded direct detection. In the last few years, our group has developed multiple novel techniques for probing this multi-phase phenomenon and discovered galaxy-scale quasar-driven winds in a variety of populations. I am continuing a comprehensive observational study of this phenomenon using ground-based and space-based telescopes. We are observing and modeling quasar-driven winds in the nearby universe to characterize their physical conditions and energetics. Furthermore, we are uncovering evidence of extreme quasar feedback at the epoch of peak galaxy formation, exploring the impact they had on the formation of the massive galaxies, and characterizing the population of dual quasars -- the precursors to supermassive black hole mergers. Our group has extensive access to James Webb Space Telescope data through multiple accepted and pending programs.
With the recent discovery of gravitational waves from neutron star and black hole mergers and with upcoming large time-variability surveys like Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the exploration of the variable universe is the emerging frontier of astrophysics. Our group is pursuing a wide range of theoretical and observational projects in Galactic astronomy to take advantage of the discovery space of variability surveys, from identifying exotic products of stellar evolution to probing planet formation. I am particularly excited about using modern surveys to discover and characterize binary white dwarfs in order to uncover the long-sought population of the progenitors of type Ia supernovae -- the cosmological standard candles that were used in the Nobel-prize winning discovery of the Dark Energy.
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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