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Main Areas of Research

  • Structure growth: cosmic structure, galaxy groups, dark matter, key mass scales in galaxy evolution
  • Gastrophysics: multi-phase gas fueling of star formation and black hole growth, star formation histories and stellar populations
  • Spheroid/bulge/nugget formation and disk regrowth: morphological transformation via galaxy mergers/interactions and gas accretion
  • Compact stellar systems: globular clusters, ultra compact dwarfs, and compact elliptical galaxies
  • Data science: computational methods and astrostatistics including Bayesian modeling and machine learning
  • Optical and infrared instrumentation: e.g., image slicers and ADC for SOAR's Goodman spectrograph in support of the RESOLVE survey

Prospective students: check out this virtual research group tour (video created by my research group, with production led by undergraduate Joel Bernstein, for students in introductory physics courses) and/or this talk about RESOLVE and ECO (a seminar I gave at the Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy, Texas A&M University, October 2019).

Surveys

  1. PI of RESOLVE (REsolved Spectroscopy Of a Local VolumE) survey: uniquely deep, broad, and complete multi-wavelength survey of stars, gas, and dark matter in galaxies and the cosmic web at z~0

  2. Co-PI of ECO (Environmental COntext) catalog with former graduate student Amanda Moffett: 10x larger companion survey to RESOLVE with superior statistics for analysis of cosmic variance but inferior completeness and spectroscopic data

  3. Science Working Group Co-Lead for LADUMA (Looking At the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array -- PIs A. Baker, S. Blyth, and B. Holwerda): next-generation radio survey tracing neutral atomic hydrogen gas over cosmic time in a deep field with multi-wavelength ancillary data

  4. Executive Committee Member for 4HS (the 4MOST Hemisphere Survey -- PIs M. Cluver and E. Taylor): a state-of-the-art spectroscopic survey of galaxies in the local universe with unprecedented volume, depth, and completeness (status: approved, observations pending in the next few years) (

  5. Co-PI of AIMSS (Archive of Intermediate Mass Stellar Systems) with former postdoc Mark Norris: comprehensive spectroscopic survey of compact stellar systems found in archival HST imaging

  6. Member of the NFGS (Nearby Field Galaxy Survey) collaboration: small multi-wavelength survey designed to represent the natural diversity of the local galaxy population over a wide range of luminosities, morphologies, and environments