Postdoctoral Scholars Research


Our current postdoctoral scholars are engaged in a wide variety of research projects summarized below.
Clement  Baruteau  
Clement's research interests include the dynamics of astrophysical disk and the formation and evolution of planetary systems. His main focus is to study the tidal interaction of forming planets with their protoplanetary disk, under which planets should undergo an orbital decay toward the central object. This process, known as planetary migration, plays the major role in the building of planetary systems.
Serena  Bertone  
My research focuses on the interplay between galactic feedback and the intergalactic medium (IGM) and I am interested in the multiple ways that galactic winds affect the properties of the IGM.
Fabio  De Colle  
The study of stellar jets, by numerical simulations, inverse theory, data analysis, etc. Numerical simulations of astrophysical fluids (jets, disks, supernova remnants, stellar winds and coronae, ...). Code development: development/implementation of numerical methods for the integration of hyperbolic equations, adaptive mesh refinement and code parallelization. Analytical and numerical calculations of the structure of disks around young stellar objects.
Fulai  Guo  
Fulai studies the evolution of the hot, diffuse, X-ray emitting gas in clusters and groups of galaxies, using both analytical methods and numerical simulations. In particular, his research focuses on the effects of AGN feedback and non-thermal components on the intracluster medium. He is also interested in black hole accretion flows, cosmic ray physics, and galaxy formation and evolution.
Sarah  Hansen  
Sarah is a postdoc in observational astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz. She is particularly interested in the formation and evolution of galaxies, galaxy clusters & large-scale structure, and in how to use this information to investigate cosmology. Previously Sarah was at the University of Chicago where she did her Ph.D. thesis on the correlation between the optical and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich signals from galaxy clusters in the SZA survey.
Tesla  Jeltema  
Tesla is a Morrison Fellow at the UCO/Lick Observatories. Her research has included observations at X-ray and optical wavelengths and numerical simulations. In the near future, it will also include gamma-ray observations with GLAST. Her research interests fall in to a few broad categories, including large-scale structure (clusters and groups of galaxies, cosmology), galaxy evolution, and indirect detection of dark matter.
Daniel  Kasen  
Hubble Fellow - Dan studies radiative transfer across a range of astrophysical environments and wavelength bands. He develops and applies large scale multi-dimensional radiation and radiation-hydrodynamics simulations. Much of his research focuses on modeling the light curves, spectra, and polarization of supernovae and other explosive transients, with an interest in scrutinizing their suitability as cosmological probes.
Dale  Kocevksi  

Kamson  Lai  
My research interests include: •Evolution of Lyman-alpha emitters at high redshift •Properties of emission line galaxies at z ~ 2 •Infrared observations of star-forming galaxies
David  Lai  
My main research interest is centered on using moderate to high-resolution spectroscopy to perform abundance analysis of very metal-poor stars. These metal-poor stars act as tracers of the early Galaxy, giving insights into the first generation of stars and into the mechanisms that formed the Galaxy itself. By using surveys such as the SDSS, we can search find metal-poor stars in the Galactic halo. Following up the most promising candidates with either moderate or high-resolution spectroscopy we can then determine the abundances of various elements in these stars. These abundances act like fingerprints to the processes that created these stars, allowing us a glimpse into the early star formation environment of the Galaxy.
Elizabeth  McGrath  
Elizabeth is a postdoc at the CfAO and is working on developing the science requirements for the Next Generation Adaptive Optics (NGAO) system for the W. M. Keck Observatory. NGAO is a planned multiple laser guide-star system that will provide extremely high performance on-axis, as well as AO correction over wider fields of view and at shorter wavelengths than the current Keck AO system. Elizabeth's primary research interests center around understanding the formation of massive galaxies in the early Universe and their evolution over cosmic time. She works with a wide range of multiwavelength data to study the environments and global properties of these so-called "red and dead" galaxies.
Eliza  Miller-Ricci  
Eliza is a Sagan fellow studying the atmospheres of extrasolar planets. In particular she is interested in modeling the atmospheres of the lowest-mass exoplanets that are currently known -- planets with masses 1 to 10 times that of the Earth, known as "super-Earths". Eliza uses theoretical models to study the properties of these planets' atmospheres such as structure, evolution, and chemistry.
Ryan  Montgomery  

Nadine  Nettelmann  

Anja  Redenbaugh  

Eugene  Rivera  

David  Rosario  
David is a postdoc with the DEEP2 group. His primary research interests are in AGN physics, demographics and multiwavelength energetics, with particular expertise in Narrow Line Region dynamics and outflows. He also works on the star formation and chemical evolution of galaxies, as well as the nature of high star-forming environments, such as super star-clusters and starburst galaxies.
Megan  Shabram  

Gabor  Worseck  
Gabor is pursuing research on the detection of intergalactic singly ionized helium towards quasars and its implications on the reionization history of helium and the evolution of the UV background. He is also interested in radiative feedback of quasars onto the IGM and recovering the three-dimensional structure of the IGM on adjacent quasar sightlines.