Vivienne Baldassare

Yale University

Triggers of AGN Activity in Dwarf Galaxies

Vivienne Baldassare grew up in Northport, New York and received her bachelor's degree in physics from Hunter College of the City University of New York in 2012. She was granted a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship to pursue her PhD in Astronomy at the University of Michigan. Vivienne is currently finishing her PhD under the advisement of Elena Gallo before beginning her Einstein Fellowship at Yale University.

Vivienne's dissertation research involved characterizing the properties of active galactic nuclei in dwarf galaxies. Studying black holes in dwarf galaxies is important for our understanding of black hole formation and growth and the co-evolution of galaxies and black holes. However, until recently, few dwarf galaxies were known to contain central black holes, making this a relatively new and unexplored population. Vivienne's research on dwarf galaxies with signatures of active galactic nuclei led to the exciting discovery of a 50,000 solar mass black hole in the nucleus of a dwarf galaxy. As an Einstein fellow, she will explore the properties of the dwarf galaxies that host active galactic nuclei with the goal of understanding what triggers black hole accretion in these objects.

Jennifer Barnes

Columbia University

Transient Modeling for the Multi-Messenger Era

Jennifer grew up in Minnesota and completed a Bachelor's degree in Physics and Sociology at Macalester College. She will earn a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley in the summer of 2017.

Jennifer's research uses radiation transport simulations to study explosive astrophysical systems. She is particularly interested in electromagnetic transients triggered by the merger of a neutron star with a second neutron star or a black hole, which may serve as electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational wave signals detected with LIGO/Virgo. Observing electromagnetic and gravitational radiation from these systems would offer us an unprecedented opportunity to constrain exotic physics, including the production of the heaviest elements and the architecture of neutron stars. As an Einstein Fellow, Jennifer plans to use theoretical modeling to understand the key observable features of electromagnetic counterparts, and to identify search strategies and parameter estimation procedures that will maximize the information gleaned from the detection of such a transient.

Rahul Kannan

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Accurate simulations of galaxy clusters

Rahul Kannan received his Masters degree in Physics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur in 2010 and his Ph.D. is Astrophysics from the University of Heidelberg, Germany in 2014. He was then a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT, for three years before becoming an Einstein fellow.

Rahul's research focuses on the numerical modeling of various processes that influence the formation and evolution of galaxies. In particular, he is interested in investigating the effects of magnetic fields, thermal conduction, and cosmic ray heating on galaxy clusters. As an Einstein fellow, he plans to run high resolution cosmological simulations to study outstanding questions in cluster physics such as blackhole feedback and its role in the evolution of galaxy clusters, the physical processes impacting the structure of the intra-cluster medium and constraining cosmological parameters using clusters.

Philip Mocz

Princeton University

Moving mesh magnetohydrodynamics: understanding the role of magneto-turbulence in cosmological structure formation and star formation

Philip grew up in Hawaii and received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Astrophysics from Harvard University in 2012 and will receive his PhD from Harvard University in 2017, where he works with his advisor Lars Hernquist.

Philip's research focuses on understanding magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) and turbulent processes in the Universe using state-of-the-art numerical simulations. Philip also has an interest in developing numerical methods that accurately capture physical invariants at the discretized level, including developing moving mesh constrained transport algorithms, smoothed-particle hydrodynamic and pseudo-spectral solvers for superfluids, and memory-efficient integer lattice techniques for the 6D Vlasov-Poisson equations. As an Einstein Fellow, Philip will continue studying fundamental MHD and turbulent processes in the context of star formation and cosmology.

Alexander Philippov

University of California, Berkeley

Kinetic modeling of non-thermal emission from compact object magnetospheres

Alexander grew up in Kaliningrad (Russia), and moved for his undergraduate studies in Physics to the Moscow institute of Physics and Technology, where he became fascinated about the physics of neutron stars and black holes. He will receive his PhD from the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University in August 2017.

As part of his PhD thesis, he developed numerical techniques for simulating three-dimensional magnetospheres of compact objects using a fully kinetic approach and performed the first 3D modeling of pulsar high energy emission. Alexander's research plan for the Einstein Fellowship is to apply these methods to understand the mysteries of pulsar radio emission, electromagnetic precursors of neutron star mergers, and non-thermal emission from accreting black holes.

Anna Rosen

Harvard University

Towards a Complete Understanding of Stellar Feedback in Massive Star Formation

Anna Rosen grew up in Los Angeles, California. She went to community college at Los Angeles Pierce College and transferred to UC Berkeley where she received her Bachelor's degree in Physics and Astronomy. She then moved to Santa Cruz, California to begin her Ph.D. at UC Santa Cruz, working with Mark Krumholz and Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz. During her graduate career she was awarded an NSF graduate research fellowship and the American Association of University Women Dissertation Year fellowship. She will receive her Ph.D. in Spring 2017.

Anna's thesis research primarily focused on the formation of massive stars and massive star clusters (MSCs) with an emphasis on how stellar feedback, the injection of energy and momentum by young stars into their surroundings, affects star formation and environment. She studies these problems through the use of analytical modeling and numerical modeling by developing new computational methods to model stellar feedback. As an Einstein Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, Anna will apply her numerical expertise to develop new computational tools to model a variety of stellar feedback processes, including feedback from radiation, stellar winds, collimated outflows, and cosmic rays that are created at the supersonic shocks produced by colliding stellar winds, to study the destructive role stellar feedback plays in massive star and MSC formation. Her work will facilitate unprecedented strides in our understanding of how stellar feedback can limit star formation and influence galaxy formation and evolution.

Zachary Slepian

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Triangulating the Universe's Contents with Galaxy Correlations

Originally from Fairfield, Connecticut, Zack was raised by a lawyer and an art history PhD. Synthesizing his dad's interest in numbers and his mom's interest in beauty led him to the study of galaxies. He attended public high school, received a BA summa cum laude from Princeton (2011), working with J. Richard Gott, III on his thesis, an MSt in philosophy of physics at Oxford (2012), and a PhD in Astrophysics (2016) from Harvard, advised by Daniel J. Eisenstein.

During his PhD, Zack focused on Baryon Acoustic Oscillations (BAO) in the 2-point and 3-point correlation function (3PCF) of galaxies, constraining a possible systematic sourced by high-redshift baryon-dark matter relative velocities using the 3PCF. This entailed developing a transformatively fast 3PCF algorithm, enabling the first high-significance detection of BAO in the 3PCF and a measurement of the cosmic distance scale six billion years ago to percent precision.

Zack's current research follows three broad paths: creating theoretical models for large-scale structure, designing fast algorithms to measure it, and applying them to datasets such as BOSS, eBOSS, and DESI. As an Einstein Fellow, he will develop the 3PCF and higher-point statistics into mature cosmological probes, both to constrain cosmological parameters such as primordial non-Gaussianity, BAO, and the growth rate of structure, and to illuminate galaxy formation through measuring galaxy bias.

Krista Lynne Smith

Stanford University

Kepler-K2 AGN Light Curves: A Unique Tool for Accretion Physics and the Detection of Binary AGN

Krista was born in Dallas, Texas. She received her BS in Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2010, where as an undergraduate she worked on spectroscopic signatures of binary quasars. Her PhD is from the University of Maryland, with significant work having been conducted as a NASA Earth and Space Sciences Fellow at the nearby Goddard Space Flight Center. Krista has used various ground-based facilities across many wavebands, including the VLA, IRTF, and numerous optical observatories, to study obscuration, star formation and feedback in the nuclear regions of active galaxies. The bulk of her thesis work, however, has involved timing studies of active galaxies using light curves from the Kepler and K2 exoplanet detection missions. This required the planning and execution of an X-ray survey of the Kepler/K2 fields of view using the Swift spacecraft, to locate AGN in these regions, as well as the development of a customized pipeline for optical AGN timing to accommodate the unique Kepler data. The resulting light curves are now enabling new insights into accretion physics.

As an Einstein Fellow, Krista will expand her timing analysis to large samples of AGN, as well as into the X-ray waveband, synthesizing the results of optical and X-ray time domain studies to explore the relationship between these wavebands' respective emitting regions. Additionally, Krista will leverage the insights gained from Kepler/K2 studies to interpret possible periodic signatures of binary AGN from current and future ground-based timing surveys, to help characterize possible counterparts to future gravitational wave detections by pulsar timing arrays. Finally, Krista hopes to undertake AGN timing studies with the upcoming Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), as well as laying groundwork for very large statistical AGN samples that will one day be conducted by LSST.

Iair Arcavi

University of California, Santa Barbara

Studying Tidal Disruption Events and Their Surprising Connection to Post-Starburst Galaxies

Iair (pronounced "ya-eer") Arcavi was born in Israel, and received his PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2013. He worked on transient surveys, compiling a large sample of core collapse supernovae. This sample was (and still is being) used to better characterize the population of supernovae from massive stars and to constrain their progenitor scenarios. Towards the end of his PhD, Iair started studying tidal disruption events (TDEs) - the tearing apart of stars by supermassive black holes. Iair identified common properties between hitherto sporadic events and discovered a surprising preference of TDEs to occur in post-starburst galaxies.

As an Einstein Fellow, Iair will continue working on TDEs, trying to better understand this peculiar preference for post-starburst galaxies, and taking advantage of it to find many more events. TDEs can be used to signal the presence and measure the properties of otherwise quiescent supermassive black holes. Increasing the sample of observed events will also help constrain models of accretion physics. Iair enjoys traveling (especially to observatories), taking pictures of the night sky, and really good chocolate.

Lia Corrales

University of Wisconsin, Madison

Bright Galactic X-ray Sources Illuminating the Interstellar Medium

Lia Corrales grew up in San Diego, CA and received her Bachelor's degree in Physics from Harvey Mudd College. She earned her Ph.D. in Astronomy at Columbia University under the advisement of Frits Paerels. She then took a postdoctoral position with Frederick Baganoff at MIT to work on Chandra observations of the Galactic Center. She currently works on observations of Sgr A* in addition to X-ray studies of the interstellar medium. She is an active contributor to astrophysical software including astropy, XSTARDB, and her python suite of dust extinction models: eblur/dust.

Lia's research uses bright X-ray binaries as beacons to study the interstellar medium in absorption and scattering. High resolution X-ray spectroscopy probes the abundance of interstellar metals as well as dust composition through extinction. High resolution imaging reveals dust scattering halos, which can be used to probe dust grain sizes and spatial distributions. As an Einstein fellow at UWisc-Madison, Lia will be applying her expertise to perform a survey of interstellar metals and search for dust scattering echoes. By applying her expertise to the highly obscured Galactic Center region, she will study the extended image of Sgr A* and the messy plasma environment at the heart of the Milky Way.

Eric Coughlin

University of California, Berkeley

Black Hole Enlightenment from Tidal Disruption Events

Eric grew up in Eastern Pennsylvania, graduating from Lehigh University with a Bachelor's degree in Astrophysics in 2011. He then moved to Colorado where he began his graduate studies in the Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences department at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He finished his PhD, working with Mitch Begelman and Phil Armitage, in 2016.

Eric's research focuses primarily on the physics of tidal disruptions events, which occur when a star is destroyed by the immense gravitational field of a supermassive black hole. As an Einstein fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, he will use numerical simulations and semi-analytic techniques to model the tidally-shredded stellar debris, deciphering how the properties of the disrupted star and the black hole affect this debris and, ultimately, the observable signatures of tidal disruption events. He will also analyze the relativistic jets and accretion disks formed during these events, using their observed properties to gain a deeper understanding of the physics of jet launching and disk formation.

Daniel D'Orazio

Harvard University

Modeling Interactions of Massive Black Hole Binaries with their Environments

Dan grew up in Orangeville, Pennsylvania. After receiving his B.Sc. in physics and mathematics from Juniata college, he spent a year as a Fulbright Fellow conducting research on the dynamics of the Galactic-center stars at the University of Zurich. Afterwards he was granted an NSF graduate research fellowship at Columbia University where he will receive his PhD in summer 2016.

His thesis has focused on predicting electromagnetic signatures of gravitational wave sources, which include the interaction of neutron star magnetic fields and black hole event horizons as well as the accretion of gas onto massive black-hole binaries in galactic nuclei.

As an Einstein Fellow Dan will continue his work on theoretical modeling of the interaction between massive black-hole binaries and their surrounding environments with the aim to predict electromagnetic identifiers of the elusive pairs. Dan plans to apply these models to aid in the discovery, characterization, and interpretation of the population of close (sub-parsec separation) massive black-hole binary candidates that are now being uncovered in electromagnetic time domain surveys. Knowledge of the massive black-hole binary population will propel our understanding of the mutual growth of galaxies and black holes and also our understanding of gravitational-wave emission from massive black-hole mergers.

Davide Gerosa

California Institute of Technology

Strong gravity to the realm of observational astronomy

Davide grew up in Monza, northern Italy, and completed his Bachelor's and Master's degree at the University of Milan. He is now finishing his PhD at University of Cambridge in the UK, before starting his Einstein Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology.

Davide's research is in gravitational-wave astronomy and relativistic astrophysics. With the first gravitational-wave detection announced (and more to come), we are at the beginning of a revolutionary age in astrophysics. Gravitational waves open a new window on the astrophysical world, carrying towards us qualitatively new information on the most energetic processes of the Universe as well as details on the gravitational interaction itself. Davide develops theoretical and computational models of gravitational-wave sources to maximize the outcome of current and future experiments. His efforts so far concentrated on spin precession in black-hole binaries, post-Newtonian inspirals, gas accretion onto supermassive black-hole binaries, black-hole recoils and compact-object formation in alternative theories of gravity.

During his Einstein Fellowship at Caltech, Davide will continue looking at phenomena where gravity, at the top of its strength, can be observed directly to decipher the mysteries of the Universe.

Boris Leistedt

New York University

Testing Fundamental Physics with Galaxy Surveys

Boris Leistedt joined the Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics in New York University after completing his Ph.D. in University College London (UK). He grew up in Belgium and received a master's degree in physics from University Paris Sud (Orsay), as well as a master's degree in electrical engineering jointly from the University of Mons (Belgium) and Supélec (France).

Boris's research is at the intersection of astronomy, statistics and cosmology: he specializes in analyzing large astronomical data sets to test pivotal questions in astrophysics and high-energy physics. He developed innovative methods to accurately measure the large-scale distribution of galaxies and quasars and track signatures of the early universe in the galaxy distribution. He also showed that massive sterile neutrinos, exotic particles that could be added to the standard model, are not currently needed to explain cosmological observations. Finally, he designed novel methods to measure the clustering and lensing of galaxies in three dimensions, and extract the properties of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation in the presence of complicated Galactic foregrounds.

As an Einstein Fellow, Boris will exploit overlapping multi-wavelength galaxy surveys to map out and test our understanding of the large scale distribution of matter in the Universe.

Morgan MacLeod

Institute for Advanced Study

Compact Binary Assembly Through Common Envelope Episodes and Dynamical Interactions

Morgan MacLeod has been a student of astronomy since a 6th grade field trip to a planetarium. Morgan is from Maine, and attended Bowdoin College, where he majored in Physics and Astronomy and did thesis research with Thomas Baumgarte. Morgan did his PhD research in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz working with Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz. His current research uses computational methods to explore close encounters between stars and compact objects in binary systems and dense stellar clusters.

As an Einstein fellow, Morgan's research will trace the assembly of compact binaries - close binary systems composed of stellar remnants like black holes, white dwarfs and neutron stars - through common envelope episodes and dynamical interactions. Compact binaries in sufficiently close orbits can merge under the influence of gravitational radiation. When they do, they give rise to some of the most luminous outbursts in the universe, but assembly processes are needed to place compact objects in such tight orbits. Morgan's research program will analyze the stellar dynamics, hydrodynamics, and observable signatures of compact binary assembly through computational modeling.

Dheeraj Pasham

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Quest for the Elusive Intermediate-mass Black Holes

Dheeraj Pasham ("DJ") received his Bachelor's degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay in 2008. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland in College Park (2014) where he focused on X-ray timing studies to understand the nature of ultraluminous X-ray sources in order to answer the question of whether they host stellar-mass or intermediate-mass black holes.

As an Einstein fellow at MIT, he plans to apply and extend his expertise in time series analysis to (1) identify and weigh intermediate-mass black holes, and (2) address the many open questions concerning the tidal disruption of stars by supermassive and intermediate-mass black holes.

Anna Patej

University of Arizona

Tracing the Distribution of Matter in the Outskirts of Galaxy Clusters

Anna Patej is originally from Warsaw, Poland, but grew up in Orange County, California. She graduated from Princeton University in 2012 with an A.B. in Physics and a certificate in Spanish Language and Culture. Afterwards, she moved to the Physics Department at Harvard University, where she obtained an A.M. in Physics in 2014 and will obtain her Ph.D. in Physics in 2016, supervised by Professors Avi Loeb and Daniel Eisenstein.

Anna has worked on a range of topics in extragalactic astrophysics and cosmology, including galaxy clusters, the clustering of galaxies on large scales, and wide-field imaging surveys. As an Einstein Fellow, she intends to leverage the University of Arizona's extensive observational resources to probe the physics of galaxy cluster outskirts using a combination of spectroscopy, photometry, and simulations.

Blake Sherwin

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Cosmology from High Precision CMB Lensing Science

Born in the US but raised in Europe, Blake studied physics and mathematics as an undergraduate at Cambridge University before completing his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University. He then moved to UC Berkeley, where he has worked as a Miller Research Fellow.

Blake's research interests span both theoretical and observational cosmology. A focus of his work has been the gravitational lensing of the CMB, a new cosmological observable that directly probes the distribution of mass and dark matter. As an Einstein fellow, he will work to make CMB lensing measurements with unprecedented precision and use them to tightly constrain the masses of neutrinos, probe the relation of dark and luminous matter, and provide insight into inflation and the early universe.

Daniel Siegel

Columbia University

The Transient Electromagnetic Sky from Binary Neutron Star Mergers

Daniel grew up in Freiburg, Germany, and studied physics at the University of Freiburg, Imperial College London, and the University of Heidelberg. He obtained his Ph.D. in physics at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, Germany, in November 2015 (advisor: Bernard Schutz).

Daniel's research mainly centers around unraveling the fundamental physical processes that generate electromagnetic emission in compact binary mergers. As an Einstein Fellow at Columbia University, he will employ general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations on supercomputers and semi-analytical techniques to model the post-merger phase of binary neutron star mergers and to accurately predict electromagnetic transients from these mergers. Such predictions are of prime importance for multi-messenger astronomy with joint electromagnetic and gravitational-wave observations by advanced LIGO/Virgo and current and future electromagnetic missions across the electromagnetic spectrum. Furthermore, they will also allow Daniel to address long-standing mysteries in astrophysics, including the origin and nature of short gamma-ray bursts, their afterglows, and heavy element formation in the universe.

Daniel Wilkins

Stanford University

Seeing to the Event Horizons of Supermassive Black Holes

Originally from near Oxford in the South of England, Dan obtained undergraduate degrees in Natural Sciences from Jesus College at the University of Cambridge. Dan remained in Cambridge to complete his Ph.D. at the University's Institute of Astronomy under the supervision of Prof. Andy Fabian. He has since held a CITA National Fellowship at Saint Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, before moving to Stanford University to take up an Einstein Fellowship.

Dan's research focuses on how supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN) are able to power some of the most luminous objects we see in the Universe through the accretion of material from their surroundings. His research relates X-ray observations to theoretical models he has developed via a number of novel analysis techniques.

As an Einstein Fellow, Dan will be developing new techniques to build up a three-dimensional image of the extreme environments around black holes to understand the structure of the accretion flow, reveal the mysterious X-ray emitting corona and learn how relativistic jets can be launched. Dan is particularly interested in how the next-generation X-ray observatories can be harnessed to study, in detail, the inner workings of accretion on to black holes.

Anna Barnacka

Harvard

Resolving the High Energy Universe with Gravitational Lensing

Anna Barnacka is an Einstein Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She received her Ph.D. in astrophysics from the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center, Poland and the Universite Paris-Sud 11, France. Her dissertation focused on an array of observational, instrumental and theoretical approaches to understanding distant sources of gamma-ray radiation.

She plans to apply gravitational lensing to a range of astrophysical problems, particularly to using lensing to resolve the high energy universe and to elucidate the physics of gamma-ray sources.

Simeon Bird

Johns Hopkins University

Measuring the Neutrino Mass with Non-Linear Cosmological Structure

Simeon Bird is from Devon, England. He graduated from the University of Cambridge with an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Astronomy. He subsequently held postdoctoral positions at the Institute for Advanced Study and Carnegie Mellon University.

Simeon has used cosmological simulations to substantially improve modeling of the effect of massive neutrinos on large scale structure. He has also showed how to robustly extract cosmological and astrophysical information from the Lyman-alpha forest. He has reconciled simulations and observations of Damped Lyman-alpha Absorbers, showing that these objects are a powerful probe of galaxy formation at high redshift.

As an Einstein Fellow, Simeon aims to improve constraints on the neutrino mass using measurements of cosmological structure. Large-scale structure measurements currently provide the tightest neutrino mass constraints, and he seeks to augment them with the greater constraining power present on small scales. Simeon is particularly interested in realising the potential of the Lyman-alpha forest as a probe of cosmological structure formation.

Rebecca Canning

Stanford

The Evolution of Early-type Galaxies: An X-ray Perspective

Becky grew up in Reigate, Surrey in the south-east of the UK. She attended Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge where she received her undergraduate degrees in Natural Sciences at the Cavendish Physics department before moving across the road to the Institute of Astronomy where she received her Ph.D. She then moved to Stanford University where she was a postdoc for two years. She will remain at Stanford to pursue her Einstein Fellowship.

Becky's research interests have focused on the detailed nature of the heating and cooling balance between the super massive black hole and the gaseous phases of massive galaxies. As an Einstein fellow Becky will use multi-wavelength datasets to better our understanding of the processes which drive the evolution of the most massive galaxies.

Liang Dai

Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Understanding the Large-scale Dynamics of Cosmic Structure

Liang Dai was born and brought up in the city of Hangzhou in southeastern China. He did his undergraduate thesis in particle physics at Peking University in Beijing. He then joined the doctoral program in Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University in 2011, where he started a pursuit in physical cosmology. Liang will receive his Ph.D. degree in the summer of 2015.

Liang's past research accomplishments dealt with topics including spherical-wave decomposition for cosmological perturbation theory, primordial non-gaussian statistics of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies, relativistic aberration of the CMB, as well as primordial inflation and reheating. Recently he has been focusing on the general relativistic dynamics of large-scale structure formation in the Universe. He has investigated the possible imprints of primordial gravitational waves in the large-scale distribution of galaxies. He is also enthusiatic about the prospect of detecting gravitational waves from galaxy shape correlation. In addition, with collaborators he has been pioneering in the development of new theoretical framework for a thorough understanding and accurate modelling of the general relativistic non-linearity in large-scale structure formation, which can help with a hunt for new physics from large-scale structure surveys in the era of precision cosmology. Taking an Einstein Fellowship to the Institute of Advanced Study at Princeton, Liang will continue his studies with application of the new methodology on important questions in modern cosmology including tracer bias, galaxy tidal alignment, Dark Energy, and primordial gravity waves.

Shea Garrison-Kimmel

California Institute of Technology

Near-field Cosmology with Hydrodynamical Simulations of the Local Group

Shea Garrison-Kimmel was born and raised in Lewis County, West Virginia. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Physics and Astronomy from Haverford College in May of 2009, and will receive his Ph.D. in 2015 from the University of California: Irvine, where he has worked with James Bullock.

Shea's graduate work has focused primarily on better understanding the dark matter distribution throughout the Local Group. His thesis work includes the publicly available Exploring the Local Volume in Simulations (ELVIS) suite, which includes forty-eight Milky Way-like hosts. Moreover, half of these hosts are in paired configurations similar to that of the Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies, in order to accurately model the megaparsec-scale environment of the Milky Way. Shea has used the ELVIS suite, along with related simulations, to investigate aspects of dwarf galaxy formation ranging from the quenching of star formation to the central densities of dwarf spheroidals. As an Einstein Fellow, Shea will build upon his previous work with a suite of state-of-the-art hydrodynamical simulations of Local Group pairs, with a particular focus on the interplay between dark matter and baryonic processes, such as feedback from massive stars and supernovae.

Massimo Gaspari

Princeton University

Modeling and Probing the Physics of Multiphase Gas Condensation in Hot Halos

Massimo Gaspari is originally from northern Italy. He earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Bologna in 2012. He was a postdoctoral Fellow at the Max Planck for Astrophysics in Garching for three years, before becoming an Einstein Fellow. Massimo develops, carries out, and analyzes 3D high-resolution MHD simulations via massively parallel supercomputing. He uses simulations as controlled astrophysical experiments to interpret multiwavelength observations and to probe new physical models which help us to clarify the evolution of galaxies, groups, and clusters of galaxies.

Massimo's current research is focused on understanding the formation and evolution of multiphase gas in the hot atmospheres of massive galaxies, and its role in the growth of supermassive black holes. Understanding the nonlinear physics of multiphase gas which condenses out of the hot X-ray halo is crucial to interpret observations and to drive robust modeling of key astrophysical processes. The multiphase gas is indeed the main fueling channel of black hole accretion, the related AGN feedback, and star formation throughout cosmic time.

Daniel Gruen

Stanford Linear Accelerator Center

Frontiers of Cluster Cosmology

Daniel Gruen grew up in Germany. He obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees and is currently finishing his PhD at Ludwig-Maximilians University, Munich. His studies also included a year-long visit to the University of Pennsylvania.

Daniel's main research interests are weak lensing analyses of structures in the Universe, such as clusters of galaxies. These studies can give us a better understanding of the formation and evolution of the most massive objects in the universe and the physics of the two big mysteries of modern cosmology, dark matter and dark energy. Daniel has also worked on methods for the measurement and statistical interpretation of weak lensing data. In addition, he was involved in the correction of instrumental features required for precision analyses with the Dark Energy Survey (DES).

As an Einstein Fellow, Daniel will work on using DES and other multi-wavelength data sets to improve our understanding of clusters of galaxies as probes of fundamental physics.

Maxwell Moe

University of Arizona

The Origin and Fate of Massive Stars through the Eyes of Eclipsing Binaries

Max grew up as an amateur astronomer under the dark skies outside Fort Collins, Colorado. He received triple Bachelor's degrees in astronomy, physics, and applied mathematics at the University of Colorado (2009) where he researched the binary star origins of planetary nebulae and the energetics of quasar outflows. As a doctoral candidate at Harvard University, Max has investigated binary star formation, the progenitors of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia), and the statistics of eclipsing binaries (EBs). He will earn his Ph.D. in astrophysics (July 2015) before starting his Einstein Fellowship at the University of Arizona.

Max's research utilizes large datasets of EBs to test formation theories of close binaries and to provide constraints for population synthesis studies of SNe Ia and X-ray binaries. He developed an automated pipeline to model the physical properties of EBs, which serendipitously revealed a new class of nascent EBs with extreme mass ratios. As an Einstein Fellow, Max plans to further incorporate EBs as astrophysical tools to characterize young massive binaries, understand the nature of binary mass transfer and accretion disks, and quantify the frequency of triple stars and their dynamical evolution toward SNe Ia.

Philipp Moesta

University of California Berkeley

Extreme Core-Collapse Supernovae, Central Engines, and Jets in Three Dimensions

Philipp Moesta grew up in Kassel, Germany and completed his Diploma (Masters) in Physics at University of Kassel. He went on to obtain his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute) in Potsdam, working with Luciano Rezzolla and Bernard Schutz on modeling binary black-hole mergers before joining the California Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral fellow.

Philipp's research has focused mainly on studying magnetic field effects in core-collapse supernova explosions and modeling electromagnetic signatures of binary black-hole mergers via 3D numerical simulations. He has developed a number of general-relativistic simulation codes and currently is the main developer of the open-source general-relativistic magnetohydrodynamics code GRHydro as part of the Einstein Toolkit. As an Einstein fellow at UC Berkeley, he will focus on studying magnetic-field driven central engines of type Ic-BL core-collapse supernova explosions with the goal of constraining the nucleosynthetic yields and observational signatures we can expect from these events.

Anna Pancoast

Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Revealing the Hidden Broad Line Region in AGN: Gas Physics, Outflows, and Black Hole Masses

Anna Pancoast grew up in New York state and received Bachelor's degrees in Physics and Astronomy from Haverford College (2009) outside of Philadelphia. She will obtain her Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California Santa Barbara in July 2015.

Anna's research focuses on uncovering the detailed geometry and dynamics of gas orbiting around supermassive black holes in active galactic nuclei (AGN). Constraining the properties of this gas in the broad line region is crucial for more precise measurements of the black hole mass using the reverberation mapping technique. As an Einstein fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Anna will use the new generation of high-quality reverberation mapping datasets to increase the number of AGN with more precise black hole mass measurements and probe the structure and diversity of the broad line region in AGN using more realistic physical models. By searching for the signatures of AGN outflows in the broad line region, she will also explore the relationship between black holes and their host galaxies.

Kyle Parfrey

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

New Computational Approaches to Black Hole Jets and Coronae

Kyle Parfrey grew up in Dublin, and received a degree in physics from the University of Oxford. He was a graduate student at Columbia University, where he completed his PhD in astronomy in 2012. He is currently a postdoc in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University.

Kyle's research is in relativistic astrophysics, focusing primarily on the magnetically dominated plasmas surrounding black holes and neutron stars, which he studies using global numerical simulations. He has worked on the magnetospheres of isolated and accreting pulsars, magnetar giant flares, and jets from black holes. Kyle is also interested in developing numerical methods, and has written the general-relativistic spectral code PHAEDRA. As an Einstein fellow, his research will revolve around three-dimensional simulations of black holes' X-ray coronae, in an effort to understand the disk-driven magnetized turbulence, consequent heating due to reconnection, and role of coronal magnetic fields in the launching of relativistic jets.

Brooke Simmons

University of California, San Diego

Illuminating the Black Hole-Galaxy Connection

Brooke Simmons earned her A.B. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University and her PhD in Astronomy from Yale University, working with Meg Urry on the co-evolution of black holes and galaxies. After her PhD, Brooke moved to the University of Oxford as a James Martin Fellow, where she was also a Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College and then the Henry Skynner Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College.

Brooke uses a variety of multi-wavelength data, including highly accurate galaxy morphologies from the Galaxy Zoo project, to research the connection between supermassive black holes and the galaxies that host them. This connection appears to exist over many orders of magnitude in black hole and galaxy mass, but its fundamental origin is still a puzzle. As an Einstein Fellow at the University of California, San Diego, Brooke will investigate supermassive black hole growth in the absence of galaxy mergers, using a rare sample of galaxies which have never had a significant merger yet host growing black holes. These active nuclei, selected because their host galaxies lack the bulges which inevitably result from a galaxy merger, provide powerful leverage to disentangle the complex drivers of black hole growth and determine the origin of observed black hole-galaxy correlations.

James Steiner

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Nature of Black Holes

James ("Jack") Steiner grew up in Maumee, Ohio, a suburb of Toledo. As an undergraduate, he studied Physics and Mathematics at Ohio University. Afterwards, he obtained his PhD in Astronomy from Harvard University in 2012. Jack spent a year at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, UK, and is presently a Hubble Fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.

Jack's research focuses on X-ray observations of stellar-mass black holes in X-ray binary systems. He will expand upon this work while an Einstein Fellow at MIT, working in particular to improve our understanding of black hole spins, the jets they emit, and the nature of ultraluminous X-ray sources.

Nicholas Stone

Columbia University

Stellar Dynamics Near Supermassive Black Holes

Nicholas Stone was born in Manhattan but grew up in Silver Spring, a suburb of Washington, DC. He received a Bachelor of Arts from Cornell University in 2008, triple majoring in mathematics, physics, and economics. In 2013, he obtained a Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics from Harvard University, and since then has been a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University.

Nicholas's research covers several topics, mostly focused on stellar dynamics in dense star clusters. A recurring interest is the tidal disruption of stars by supermassive black holes (SMBHs) - violent events that offer a natural laboratory in which to study extremes of accretion astrophysics, and that should serve as a valuable probe of SMBH demographics in the LSST era. His past work on the subject has examined many different aspects of these events, from the stellar dynamical processes that set their rates to the evolution of the resulting accretion flows. He has also studied short gamma ray bursts, and indirect signatures of exoplanetary systems around white dwarf stars. As an Einstein Fellow at Columbia University, Nicholas will extend his past research on tidal disruption events, focusing on interesting open problems such as the circularization of stellar debris and the uncertain origins of observed optical emission. He will also work on other problems, including the formation of supermassive black hole seeds in collisional runaways, and the evolution of circumbinary disks around SMBH binaries.

Sagi Ben-Ami

SAO

Foundations for the Next Generation Space Missions: Science and Technology

Sagi Ben-Ami, originally from Israel, gained a Master degree in High energy physics, and after working for a couple of years at CERN on the ATLAS Muon spectrometer, started a PhD in Astrophysics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. During his PhD, Sagi was an active member of the Palomar Transient Factory working on observations of stripped-envelope SNe. Sagi is one of the optical designers of the Spectral Energy Distribution machine - an IFS built from the bottom up for transient classification, the Weizmann Astronomical Multiplexer - a novel instrument for wide-field imaging, and ULTRASAT - a proposed UV mission for early detection of explosive transients.

During his postdoctoral fellowship term, Sagi's research will focus on developing technologies for X-ray observations as a member of the SMART-X team, as well as on feasibility studies for future X-ray missions using Chandra/XMM data. Sagi will also continue his work on novel instrumentation for ground based astronomy across the EM spectrum.

Blakesley Burkhart

Harvard

New Frontiers for Turbulence in the Intercluster Medium: A Multiwavelength Study of the Velocity Power Spectrum with Chandra, Hubble, and Astro-H

Blakesley Burkhart was born and raised in Louisville, Kentucky. She obtained bachelor's degrees in physics and mathematics from the University of Louisville in 2008 and master's degrees in physics and astronomy from the University of Wisconsin Madison in 2010. She will receive her PhD in astronomy in 2014 from the University of Wisconsin Madison, where she worked under the supervision of Professor Alex Lazarian.

Blakesley's research focuses on developing statistical techniques for observational diagnostics of magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) turbulence in the multiwavelength ISM, using a large range of observational tracers. As an Einstein fellow at the Harvard Center for Astrophysics, Blakesley will make the first measurements of the velocity power spectrum in the intercluster medium (ICM) using Ly-alpha absorption lines and X-ray emission lines with the application of the velocity coordinate spectrum (VCS) technique.

Justin Ellis

Jet Propulsion Lab

Astrophysical Implications of Nanohertz Gravitational Wave Detection in Pulsar Timing Data

Justin Ellis grew up in Jefferson County, West Virginia. He received his Bachelors degree in physics from West Virginia University in 2009. After completing two years of graduate school at West Virginia University, he transferred to the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee where he will receive his Ph.D in astrophysics in the summer of 2014.

Justin's research has focused primarily on the search for gravitational waves using pulsar timing arrays. He has played a large role in developing several robust and efficient gravitational wave detection algorithms. As an Einstein fellow at JPL, he will focus on analyzing newly released datasets with various methods to search for GWs and will develop new data analysis techniques that take into account more complicated GW features so that one can cover a broader area of parameter space. Finally, he also plans to look beyond current data releases and perform simulations of future data to determine how much astrophysical information can be gained from GW observations with PTAs.

Wen-fai Fong

University of Arizona

Setting the Stage for Advanced LIGO: Characterizing the Electromagnetic Counterparts to Gravitational Wave Signals

Wen-fai Fong grew up in a quaint suburb outside of Rochester, NY. She received double Bachelor's degrees in Physics and Biology at MIT (2008), and will receive her Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics from Harvard University in May 2014. Wen-fai plans to pursue her Einstein Fellowship at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

Wen-fai's research focuses on the electromagnetic signatures of compact object mergers, involving either two neutron stars or a neutron star and a black hole. Such systems are the most promising candidates for gravitational wave detections with Advanced LIGO/VIRGO, and are also likely sites for the production of heavy elements in the Universe. For her dissertation research, she showed that short-duration gamma-ray bursts, a class of extremely energetic explosions, likely originate from compact object mergers. As an Einstein Fellow, Wen-fai will build a multi-wavelength observational campaign to characterize gamma-ray burst afterglows, "kilonovae", and other more exotic electromagnetic signatures from compact object mergers to assess their joint detectability with gravitational waves. Such research will be crucial prior to the upcoming era of gravitational wave discovery.

Apart from research, Wen-fai is also passionate about mentoring. Recognizing the importance of her own mentors, Wen-fai started a peer and faculty mentoring program for graduate students while at Harvard. She plans to make such mentoring initiatives an integral part of her career.

Francois Foucart

Lawrence Berkeley National Lab

Simulating Compact Binary Mergers for Multi-Messenger Astronomy

Francois grew up in Brussels, Belgium, and completed engineering degrees at the Free University of Brussels and the Ecole Centrale Paris. He obtained his PhD from Cornell, working with Saul Teukolsky on the numerical modeling of black hole-neutron star mergers, then moved to the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics as a post-doctoral fellow.

Francois' work has been mainly focused on the study of compact binary mergers as sources of gravitational waves detectable by the next generation of ground-based detectors (Advanced LIGO/VIRGO/KAGRA), and on obtaining constraints on the production of potential post-merger electromagnetic signals (e.g. gamma-ray bursts, kilonovae). These studies are performed through numerical simulations using a general relativistic code, with a steadily improving modeling of the most important physical effects in the hot accretion disk that can be formed after merger (neutrino radiation, magnetic fields, description of matter at nuclear densities...).

Francois has also studied the long-term evolution of warped accretion disk, and in particular the evolution of the orientation of protoplanetary disks.

Kazumi Kashiyama

University of California, Berkeley

Unveiling Hidden Violent Transients with Multi-Messenger Signals

Kazumi Kashiyama grew up in a seaside town in Wakayama, Japan. He obtained his PhD in Physics from Kyoto University in 2012. Then, he was a JSPS research fellow at Pennsylvania State University for two years before becoming an Einstein fellow.

One of his research interests is in the diversity of explosive deaths of massive stars; gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) and supernovae (Sne). As an Einstein fellow, he will focus on the roles of relativistic jets in such explosions. The multi-wavelength and multi-messenger signals associated with the jet formation, propagation, and energy dissipation will be theoretically investigated to clarify how ongoing and upcoming observatories can unveil the GRB-SN connection.

Ji-hoon Kim

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Building A High-z Quasar-Hosting Galaxy from First Principles -- How Do Galaxies and Massive Black Holes Get Their Masses in the Early Universe?

Ji-hoon is originally from South Korea, and has always wanted to be a person who thinks and sees things from a different perspective. He received his B.Sc. degree in Physics from Seoul National University, and then his Ph.D. degree from Stanford University. From 2011 to 2013, he was at the University of California, Santa Cruz as an Inter[Stellar and Galactic] Medium Program of Studies Fellow. In January 2014, he joined the theoretical astrophysics program at California Institute of Technology as a Moore Fellow.

Ji-hoon's research has focused on developing a numerical framework that self-consistently depicts the interplay between galactic ingredients — gas, stars, and massive black holes (MBHs) - with minimal fine-tuning. He has applied this tool to various cosmological contexts including dwarf galaxies, and massive star-forming galaxies hosting MBHs. He also has helped an inter-institutional effort to compare different cosmological simulations, called the AGORA Project designed to advance galaxy formation theory across numerical platforms. As an Einstein Fellow, he aims to use his tools and experience to study how galaxies and MBHs acquire their masses in the high-redshift universe.

Ashley King

Stanford

Unveiling the Physical Nature of Black Hole Winds

Ashley King is originally from Columbia, MD. She got her B.Sc. degree from the University of Maryland, double majoring in both astronomy and physics. She went on to get her Ph. D., in astrophysics at the University of Michigan, followed by a brief postdoc at the University of Cambridge.

Ashley's research focuses on accretion driven outflows from black holes of all sizes. These outflows, both wide-angle winds and highly collimated jets, can have an enormous impact on their surroundings, shaping the environment in which they reside. Understanding and observationally quantifying the launching mechanisms of these outflows has been a major goal of hers. During her Einstein fellowship, Ashley will extend her research, examining the physical impact of winds and jets on their surroundings. This will shed light on the link between the two types of outflows as well as the coevolution between black holes and the galaxies they reside in.

Aleksander Sadowski

MIT

Modeling Radiative Accretion Disks in General Relativity

Olek Sadowski received his Ph.D. from Copernicus Astronomical Center in Warsaw, Poland. His supervisor was Prof. Marek Abramowicz who introduced him to black hole accretion. His thesis was about super-critical accretion disks. He then moved to Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics to work with Prof. Ramesh Narayan on numerical simulations of accretion flows. He developed the very first general relativistic radiation magnetohydrodynamic code KORAL which is used to study thin and thick accretion disks. As an Einstein Fellow he joined the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

Olek's interest focuses on accretion on black holes. He also studies AGN feedback, tidal disruption events, ejection mechanisms of relativistic jets, and develops numerical methods.

Johan Samsing

Princeton University

Tidal Effects in Few-body Interactions

Johan Samsing is from Denmark, and is currently finishing his Ph.D at the Dark Cosmology Centre, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen. A major part of his recent research has also been done in the US in collaboration with people at UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz. He is now returning to the US as an Einstein Fellow where he will continue his work at Princeton University.

Johan's recent research spans several topics from constraining dark energy using the CMB and redshift space distortions, to stellar dynamics and gravitational wave emission. At the moment he works on tidal effects in stellar interactions and the dynamics of tidally disrupted dark matter halos. Part of Johan's future research at Princeton University will be on gravitational waves, a research area that (hopefully) will be revolutionized over the forthcoming years with new detectors coming up. His research will also include a larger study on the outcomes from interactions between stars and compact objects, interactions that are believed to be directly linked to the most energetic events in the universe including GW sources.

Grant Tremblay

Yale

Star Formation amid Kinetic Black Hole Feedback - The unified power of Chandra and ALMA

Originally from Maine, USA, Grant Tremblay is currently a Fellow at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) headquarters near Munich, and an Astronomer at ESO's Very Large Telescope in Chile. His Ph.D. in Astrophysics is from the Rochester Institute of Technology, and he was previously at the Space Telescope Science Institute, the Johns Hopkins University, and the University of Rochester.

As an incoming Einstein Fellow at Yale University, Grant's research will use data from the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Hubble Space Telescope, and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) to study star formation amid kinetic black hole feedback, a powerful phenomenon with profound implications for galaxy evolution across cosmic time.

Hsiang-Yi Karen Yang

University of Maryland, College Park

Unveiling the origin of the Fermi bubbles -- MHD simulations of cosmic rays in the Galaxy.

Karen is originally from Taipei, Taiwan. She received her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Physics from National Taiwan University. She obtained her Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Illinois in 2011 and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan.

Karen's research is concerned with using numerical simulations to investigate how the combined effects of shocks, radiative cooling, feedback from active galactic nuclei (AGN), magnetic fields, and cosmic rays (CRs) influence the observable properties of galaxies and galaxy clusters. She has been studying cluster cosmology, AGN accretion and feedback, the role of CRs in galaxies and galaxy clusters, and theoretical modeling of the Fermi bubbles. As an Einstein Fellow, she will continue to probe the physical origin of the Fermi bubbles by using 3D MHD simulations that include relevant CR physics. In particular, she will identify the most important physical mechanisms responsible for the spatially uniform hard spectrum of the observed bubbles. She will also constrain the composition and spectra of CR particles within the bubbles, thus shedding light on their origin and on the nature of AGN feedback.

Claude-Andre Faucher-Giguere

Berkeley

The Physics of Black Hole Feedback

Claude-Andre studied mathematics and physics at McGill University, in Canada, before earning his Ph.D in astronomy from Harvard University in 2010. He was then a Miller Research Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, for three years before becoming an Einstein Fellow.

Claude-Andre's research is focused on understanding the diverse physical processes that drive galaxy formation and evolution. As an Einstein Fellow, he will develop theoretical models of how supermassive black holes affect their host galaxies, in particular through powerful radiation-driven winds. Claude-André is also interested in the growth of galaxies in a cosmological context and in how star formation is regulated within galaxies.

Javiera Guedes

Princeton

Understanding the Details of Galaxy Formation and Evolution Through High-Resolution Simulations

Javiera is originally from Santiago, Chile. She obtained her PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2011, where she worked on a variety of topics including galaxy formation, massive black hole dynamics, and planet formation and detection. Prior to that, Javiera worked on supernova detection at Berkeley, where she obtained her bachelor degrees on Physics and Astronomy.

aviera's research is currently focused on understanding the details of how galaxies form and evolve using high-resolution cosmological simulations. She was part of the Eris project, which produced one of the more successful simulations of a Milky Way analog to date. As an Einstein fellow at Princeton, Javiera will study the details of the formation and evolution of the most prominent galactic structures and the fine balance between pristine gas inflows, star formation, outflows, and the diffuse X-ray emission of galaxies.

James Guillochon

Harvard

Stellar Homicide: The Forensics of Tidal Disruption

James Guillochon is originally from San Diego, CA, and earned his B.Sc in Physics at UC Irvine. In 2009, he began work on his doctoral research at UC Santa Cruz, and will receive in Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics in the summer of 2013.

James' research has primarily focused on the consequences of strong tides in astrophysical systems, guided by the results of hydrodynamical simulations he has performed. During the course of his doctoral degree, he has worked on problems in which tides play a dominant role, including binary systems composed of two white dwarf stars, close-in gas-rich exoplanets, and AGN flaring resulting from the tidal disruption of stars. As an Einstein fellow, James will be performing hydrodynamical simulations of the debris structure resulting from the tidal disruption of a star by a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Using the feeding rates derived from these simulations, he will generate models of the resulting light curves to aid in both identifying individual disruption events, and to improve our understanding of accretion processes in general.

Rutger van Haasteren

JPL

Searching for gravitational waves in Pulsar Timing Array data

Rutger grew up in The Hague, The Netherlands, and received his master's degree in theoretical physics from Leiden University. In Leiden Rutger also received his Ph.D. in astrophysics, where he studied with Yuri Levin.

His research has focused mainly on pulsar timing arrays. These are projects aimed to use high-precision timing of millisecond pulsars to detect astrophysical gravitational waves. The deviations from regular pulse arrival times contain information about the dynamical space-time distortions of the Galaxy. Rutger's Ph.D. work was concerned with the construction of various data analysis techniques to extract gravitational-wave signatures from the combined pulse arrival times of many millisecond pulsars. His research led to the most stringent published upper-limit on the stochastic background of gravitational waves, as generated by an ensemble of supermassive black hole binaries in distant galaxies.

As an Einstein fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Rutger aims to extend his work on pulsar timing array data analysis methods. As it stands now, while pulsar timing arrays are rapidly gaining sensitivity, many practical challenges in the analysis of pulsar timing data still remain. It is not unlikely that a first-ever direct detection of gravitational waves will be made by pulsar timing arrays, and Rutger hopes to contribute to such a fundamental discovery.

Yan-Fei Jiang

SAO

Global Radiation MHD Simulations of Black Hole Accretion Disks

Understanding the accretion process around black holes can help us understand how the black holes at the centers of galaxies grow and how the observed relations between the black holes and the host galaxies are established. When the accretion rate is above a few percent of the Eddington accretion rate, the inner region of black hole accretion disk is expected to be radiation pressure dominated. In order to understand the properties of accretion disks in the radiation pressure dominated regime, Yan-Fei has developed a new 3D radiation MHD code, which is accurate in both optically thin and optically thick regimes, for both radiation pressure and gas pressure dominated flows. He has applied his new code to study the thermal stability and vertical structures of radiation pressure dominated accretion disks. He has also studied how to form high temperature corona with MRI based on his radiation MHD simulations.

During his Einstein Fellowship, he will carry out global radiation MHD simulations to study the structures of the accretion disks with MRI from the fundamental radiation MHD equations, which will be a significant improvement over the standard thin disk model. He will focus on how the thermal instability in the radiation dominated disks saturates and the observational features of the disk. He will be able to calculate the spectrum from the simulations and compare with observations directly, which will significantly improve our understanding on the central engine of AGNs and black hole binaries. Yan-Fei is also interested in many other radiation hydrodynamic problems, such as formation of massive stars and Rayleigh-Taylor instability in the radiation supported atmosphere. These problems will also be studied with his new code.

Yan-Fei will receive his Ph.D. from the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University in August 2013. He was born in NanChang (China), near the Yangtze River. Then he spent 4 years in Beijing for his undergraduate studies and received his B.S. in physics from Tsinghua University.

Tim Linden

University of Chicago

A Multiwavelength Model for Novel Physics in the Galactic Center

Tim Linden is currently finishing his Ph.D in Physics at the University of California, Santa Cruz (2013). In 2008, he completed his B.A. in both Physics and the Integrated Science Program at Northwestern University. Tim is originally from Stow, Ohio - a suburb nestled between Cleveland and Akron. As an Einstein Fellow at the University of Chicago, Tim's research will focus on the indirect detection of particle dark matter candidates.

Dark matter does not interact with the electromagnetic force, which makes it difficult to detect experimentally despite the fact that it is five times as prevalent as ordinary (baryonic) matter in our universe. However, many models indicate that dark mater particles interact through the weak nuclear force, a process which might be seen via the annihilation of two dark matter particles into standard model particles, which we can detect in astronomical observations. This requires both theoretical modeling of the properties of the dark matter particle, in order to determine the signatures which may be seen with current telescopes, as well as understanding the astrophysical backgrounds which might mimic a dark matter signal. The galactic center is an especially interesting region for dark matter searches, because this region is believed to be the brightest source of dark matter annihilations in our universe. However, the galactic center also contains a significant population of high-energy astrophysical sources, which must be understood better in order to uncover any dark matter signal. Tim's work will focus on improving our models of the galactic center region, in order to better differentiate possible dark matter signatures from the bright astrophysical background.

Luke Roberts

Caltech

The Neutrino and Nucleosynthetic Signatures of Newly Formed Neutron Stars

Luke Roberts grew up in Homer, Alaska, received his Bachelors degree in Physics from Colorado College (2006), and obtained his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz (2012). Currently, he is a Dubridge Fellow at the California Institute of Technology.

Luke's research focuses on theoretical studies of dynamical events in the lives of neutron stars, including their formation during the collapse of massive stars and their deaths during binary neutron star mergers. These events are some of the most promising candidates for multi-messenger astronomy (including gamma rays, neutrinos, and gravitational waves) and are the likely source of the majority of the heavy elements found in the universe. As an Einstein Fellow, Luke will study nuclear processes near the surface of young neutron stars and convection in their cores, both of which strongly influence neutrino emission from these objects. This work will address questions concerning the synthesis of the heavy elements and about the expected neutrino signal of core-collapse supernovae.

Mario Manuel

University of Michigan

Exploring Astrophysical Hydrodynamics in the Laboratory

Mario Manuel grew up outside of Seattle, Washington and has always been fascinated by all things related to outer space. Mario further developed his interest in space sciences at the University of Washington, where he graduated from in 2006 with B.S.'s in Aerospace Engineering, Physics, and Astronomy. He was first exposed to experimental research while studying abroad in Giessen, Germany through an exchange program with the Physics Department. This led Mario to seek a graduate education in experimental research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he earned a S.M. in Aerospace Engineering and his Ph.D. in Applied Plasma Physics through the High Energy Density (HED) Physics Division, led by Dr. R. D. Petrasso, of the Plasma Science and Fusion Center.

Mario's dissertation research focused on the development of a monoenergetic proton radiography system to measure self-generated electromagnetic fields in HED plasmas. In these experiments, high-power lasers irradiate solid targets to generate multi-million-degree plasmas for a few billionths of a second where hydrodynamic instabilities have been predicted to create strong magnetic fields. Mario's work concentrated on making the first experimental measurements of magnetic fields induced by Rayleigh-Taylor growth in laser-produced plasmas. This research was supported in large part by the National Laser User Facility (NLUF) and Fusion Science Center (FSC) programs through the Department of Energy.

As an Einstein Fellow, Mario will work with Dr. R. P. Drake's laboratory astrophysics group at the University of Michigan with the primary goal of 'Exploring Astrophysical Hydrodynamics in the Laboratory'. With present-day high-power laser facilities, astrophysically-relevant HED plasma environments may be readily created in a controlled laboratory setting. Many astrophysical systems can be properly scaled and reproduced at these facilities thereby providing a new experimental window in which to probe these phenomena and directly compare to numerical models. Mario will continue promoting the field of laboratory astrophysics and hopes to encourage other scientists to think about their astrophysical systems and whether some piece of physics may be recreated in the lab.

Selma de Mink

Carnegie Institute

The Impact of Massive Binaries through the Cosmic Ages

Selma de Mink received her PhD in the Netherlands at Utrecht University. In 2010 she moved to the United States for a Hubble Fellowship at the Space Telescope Science Institute and the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

She is mainly interested in the evolution of the most massive stars and how they contributed in transforming the pristine Universe into the one in which we live today. Her main expertise is modeling their evolution accounting for effects of rotation, binary interaction and stellar mergers. As an Einstein fellow she will focus on studying the impact of binarity on the role that massive stars throughout cosmic times.

Krzysztof Nalewajko

University of Colorado Boulder

Understanding gamma-ray flares of blazars

Krzysztof grew up in Ostroda, Poland. He obtained his Master's degree in Astronomy from the University of Warsaw, and Ph.D. in Astronomy from the Nicolaus Copernicus Astronomical Center in Warsaw, working with Marek Sikora. Since 2011, he's been working at JILA, University of Colorado and NIST, in the group of Mitch Begelman.

His primary research interests are blazars, the structure of relativistic jets in active galaxies, dissipative and radiative processes operating in non-thermal plasmas. As a graduate student, he studied physical properties of reconfinement shocks, calculated radiative properties of reconnection-powered minijets, interpreted the results of multiwavelength observations of blazars. As a postdoc, he investigated the development of current-driven instabilities in jets, and coordinated a multiwavelength campaign on two blazars.

As an Einstein Fellow, Krzysztof will investigate the gamma-ray flares of blazars. This project will involve comprehensive analysis of data from Fermi, characterizing the observed modes of spectral variability, looking for signatures of specific dissipation and particle acceleration processes. He will also investigate the structure and composition of relativistic jets, and the possible role of current-driven instabilities and magnetic reconnection in powering the gamma-ray emission.

Maria Petropoulou

Purdue University

A time-dependent approach to the production of high energy radiation, neutrinos and cosmic rays from relativistic

I grew up in Athens, Greece. I have obtained my Bachelor Degree in Physics (2008) at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, where I have also attended the program of Master studies in Astrophysics. Just after receiving my M.Sc. (2010), I was granted the scholarship HERACLEITUS II for starting my PhD research; I will defend my thesis at the University of Athens in November 2013.

My research focuses on non-thermal radiation signatures from relativistic particles in astrophysical plasmas. Particularly, I am interested in studying the emitted radiation from Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) and Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN), since this can provide information about quantities of the emitting region which cannot otherwise be deduced, as, for example, the magnetic field strength, the species and the distribution function of the emitting particles, etc. During my PhD I have focused, on one hand, on the time-dependent calculation of GRB afterglow spectra and light curves by taking into account energy gains and losses that continuously shape the radiating particles spectra. On the other hand, I have studied the properties of specific radiative instabilities that can occur in leptohadronic plasmas. As these provide an efficient mechanism for transferring energy from high-energy particles into radiation as well as exhibiting interesting variability properties, I have applied these to the emitting plasma of blazars.

As an Einstein Fellow at the Purdue University, I plan to extend the study of radiative instabilities in the presence of particle acceleration, since this will provide a self-consistent calculation of their maximum energy and may answer in questions like: Can UHE protons be present in compact astrophysical sources, such emission sites of blazars, or the developed instabilities drain a significant amount of energy from protons? I aim also in working on the problem of the GRB prompt emission, which I will study under two different perspectives (in the context of the "Supercritical Pile" model and of the “Photospheric” model) , since it is not yet clear which is the responsible radiation mechanism for the gamma-ray emission.

Sasha Tchekhovskoy

LBL

New Frontiers in Modeling Accretion, Jets, and their Emission

Sasha completed his bachelors and masters degrees in Applied Physics and Mathematics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in Russia. He received his PhD in Astronomy from Harvard University in 2010. He is originally from the town of Dolgoprudny near Moscow, Russia.

Sasha's research concentrates on understanding how accreting black holes produce relativistic, collimated outflows, or jets. Jets are expected to form in the vicinity of a black hole, making them powerful probes of strong-field gravity. Sasha uses tools ranging from pencil and paper calculations to first principles large-scale general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations to quantitatively understand the connection between accretion, black hole spin, and the production of relativistic jets.

In addition to jets, radiation is another important probe of strong gravity. However, how radiation is connected to the dynamical properties of the accretion flow in the most luminous systems is poorly understood. In such systems the radiation can strongly couple to the accretion flow and dramatically change its structure and dynamics. This limits our ability to infer the properties of these important systems, e.g. quasars, ultra-luminous x-ray sources, and tidal disruption events, which most rapidly grow their black holes and can potentially contain intermediate-mass black holes. As an Einstein Fellow, Sasha will construct accurate dynamical models of such luminous systems, account for the back-reaction of radiation on the accretion flow, and develop tools that allow us to accurately infer the properties of these systems from observations (e.g., black hole masses and spins).