Dr. Gurtina Besla’s research focuses on the formation and evolution of low mass dwarf galaxies. Through numerical simulations, Dr. Besla explores the impact of gravitational interactions on the observed properties of low mass galaxies in various environments.

Dr. Besla is a world expert in the study of the closest example of an interacting pair of dwarf galaxies, the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds.

Gurtina’s research on these galaxies has overturned conventional wisdom, illustrating that the Magellanic Clouds are likely recent interlopers in our neighborhood rather than long term companions to our Galaxy.

Dr. Chi-kwan Chan (CK) is an Associate Astronomer/Research Professor at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, and has been serving as the Secretary of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Science Council since 2020. He recently led the publication of the computational and theoretical modeling/interpretation of our black hole, Sgr A*. Professor Chan created EHT’s computational and data processing infrastructure and continues to lead it to this day, along with EHT’s Software and Data Compatibility Working Group.

CK is a Senior Investigator of Black Hole PIRE, a leader of the Theoretical Astrophysics Program TAP, a Data Science Fellow, and a member of the Applied Mathematics Program. 

Dr. Giacalone’s core research interests include understanding the origin, acceleration, and propagation of cosmic rays, and other charged-particle species in the magnetic fields of space, and general topics in space plasma physics, and astrophysics.

Joe develops physics-based theoretical and computational models which are used to interpret in situ spacecraft observations. He is interested in the general properties of solar, interplanetary, and galactic magnetic fields.

Currently, he is studying the origin of large solar-energetic particle events (a.k.a. solar cosmic rays) which involves a number of diverse aspects of solar physics and space physics. He has written papers describing the propagation of solar-flare particles from the Sun to the Earth where they are observed by spacecraft such as ACE, Ulysses, Wind, etc.

He is also interested in the general topic of particle acceleration in astrophysical plasmas.

Dr. Gralla works on a variety of problems in gravitational physics, plasma physics and astrophysics, with an emphasis on the regime where gravity and electromagnetism are strong. A unifying theme is that strong fields make for interesting physics and theoretical simplification that enables clean study of important processes.

Sam likes to work on problems that have both intrinsic interest and astrophysical application. Recent interests have included the two-body problem in general relativity, electromagnetic and gravitational self-force effects on the motion of bodies, strong-field (force-free) plasmas and quantum-electrodynamical corrections, and physics near rapidly rotating black holes.

Dr. Mathieu Renzo, Assistant Professor at the Steward Observatory / Astronomy Department at the University of Arizona and received his Ph.D. in Amsterdam.  Dr. Renzo is a physicist with interest in astronomy because of the wide range of phenomena and processes occurring astrophysical context. He focuses mostly on stellar astrophysics, and in particular massive stars, binary evolution, and stellar explosions. His research interest include stellar kinematics (runaway, “walkaway”, and hyper-velocity stars), core-collapse and (pulsational) pair-instability supernovae, X-ray binaries, time-domain and gravitational-wave astronomy. Mathieu mainly uses analytical and numerical simulations to understand massive star evolution, their explosions, and how they interact in binary systems. He uses both detailed stellar structure and evolution models (e.g., with MESA, and rapid population synthesis (e.g., with binary c or COSMIC). Mathieu is learning to run hydrodynamical simulations (with ATHENA++).

Dr. Rozo is an experimental cosmologist, utilizing large scale structure probes to better understand the physics behind the accelerated expansion of the Universe: that is, since gravity pulls, how is it possible for the expansion of the Universe to be accelerating? As of today, there are only two plausible solutions: either the energy budget of the Universe is dominated by a previously unknown form of mass—energy, or general relativity fails to be the correct description of gravity on cosmological scales. Resolving this dichotomy is the single most pressing question in observational cosmology today.

Eduardo’s research directly addresses this problem by utilizing the abundance galaxy clusters as a cosmological. His research exploits both photometric (e.g. Dark Energy Survey and Large Synoptic Survey Telescope), spectroscopic (Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument), and multi-wavelength data (Planck, South Pole Telescope, X-ray data from Chandra and XMM) to better understand this observational probe, and thereby safeguard against systematic uncertainties.