Professor of Physics & Astronomy at the University of California, Davis
I am honored and excited that the Institute for Defense Analyses has selected me to join the 2027-2028 class of the Defense Science Study Group. I will join 17 other professors from around the country to learn about United States defense policy, related research and development, and the systems, missions, and operations of our armed forces and intelligence community. This news article from UC Davis College of Letters & Science provides more detail.
How Did the Milky Way Galaxy Form? This news article from UC Davis College of Letters & Science highlights my recent public talk at Astronomy on Tap Davis. This lively event also featured Sean Carroll – I was ‘lucky’ to get scheduled to give a public talk right after him! (Or another way to think of it is that Sean opened for me…)
UC Davis College of Letters & Science highlighted our recent research in their article: Simulations Explain Abundance of Bright Galaxies Observed at Cosmic Dawn. We showed how bursty star formation in our FIRE-2 simulations of galaxy formation naturally explains the abundance of bright galaxies in the early universe as the James Webb Space Telescope has observed.
Sky & Telescope highlighted our recent research in their article: The Alignment of the Milky Way’s Entourage, Explained. PhD student Jenna Samuel led this work, to understand the origin of the thin plane of satellite galaxies around the Milky Way, including the likely important role that the Large Magellanic Cloud has played in causing this planar structure.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences highlighted work from our group and the FIRE collaboration in an article: Inner Workings: Dwarf galaxies pose new questions about dark matter and the early universe that models are struggling to answer.