I’m a Ph.D. candidate in physics at the University of Michigan, in the Avestruz Lab for Computational Cosmology and Astrophysics. I study how incident radiation affects the cooling and heating of gas in galaxies, using machine learning and hydrodynamic simulations. I am also interested in science communication, and am a workshop co-coordinator with Researchers Expanding Lay Audience Teaching and Engagement (RELATE). RELATE is a graduate student group at U-M that runs workshops to help train grad students and post-docs here to talk about their research with public audiences. Outside of science, I am an avid fiction reader. I mostly gravitate towards science fiction and fantasy, but I enjoy historical fiction and mysteries as well. I enjoy playing classical piano, but my skills have deteriorated significantly in grad school now that I no longer take lessons. During pandemic lockdowns, I got into crossword puzzles, and try to do one a day.
The formation of galaxies and stars involves clouds of cold gas collapsing due to gravity. However, as a gas cloud is compressed, it will heat up and exert thermal pressure, resisting being compressed further. The energy density of the gas can also change by emitting or absorbing light. Cooling (emitting light) allows a gas cloud to collapse further. For these reasons, the radiative cooling and heating rates of gas need to be modeled in simulations of galaxy formation. While cooling and heating rates can be computed exactly with existing tools (like the photoionization code Cloudy), fast approximations are needed in state-of-the-art simulations. I study how the presence of local incident radiation (from nearby stars or galaxies) modifies these cooling and heating rates. Because the incident radiation field is a function of the frequency of the light, this is a very high-dimensional problem that is well-suited to machine learning techniques. I addition to developing machine learning tools to approximate cooling and heating rates, I want to better understand how the accuracy of the cooling and heating approximations used in a galaxy formation simulation affects simulated galaxies properties.
https://news.fnal.gov/2022/05/6-students-awarded-doe-graduate-student-research-fellowships/