Explorer Categories: Astronomy, Statistics, & Mathematics

I am an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley majoring in Astrophysics and Planetary Science. As a member of the university’s Radio Astronomy Lab, I am very interested in how planets look in radio frequencies, which tells us about the health and behavior of a planet’s magnetosphere and atmosphere. My current work involves developing SVD-based models to streamline analysis on planetary radio emissions, primarily from Jupiter. I aspire to use these planetary radio emissions as an additional avenue for discovering exoplanets. In addition to my work in the Radio Astronomy Lab, I am a member of the University of California Marching Band where I play trumpet. When I am not conducting research or spreading school spirit with Cal Band, I also enjoy climbing, cycling, backpacking, and Christopher Nolan movies.

I am a fifth year PhD candidate in statistics, advised by Fernando Pérez and Jon McAuliffe, and I research statistical methods for extreme weather and climate events. I’ve always been interested in atmospheric phenomena, viewing them as a manifestation of the power of nature and the dynamic system in which we live our lives. I followed this interest during my undergraduate studies, completing a major in physics at the University of Chicago. However, after taking a few statistics courses, I was amazed at the potential for statistical tools to extract insights from such chaotic and seemingly random systems. Motivated by the need to develop tools to accurately assess the changing risks and severity of extreme weather due to climate change, I also completed a major in statistics and decided to pursue a PhD. With colleagues at LBNL’s CASCADE group, NCAR, and the British Antarctic Survey, I work on problems ranging from risk estimation for extreme compound weather events to assessing characteristics and impacts of extreme precipitation events in Antarctica.

I am originally from Laurel, MD, a suburb of both Baltimore and Washington, D.C., and have been living in California since I began my PhD in 2021. In my free time, I like to tend to my houseplants and bake desserts.

Natasha Abrams is a 5th year astrophysics PhD student at UC Berkeley, searching for black holes via gravitational microlensing. She works on photometric microlensing with large surveys, astrometric microlensing, and understanding how binaries impact our statistical understanding of the events we discover. She is passionate about pedagogy and mentorship, both in research and broader academic settings. Outside of astrophysics, she enjoys choral singing, playing board games, and reading fantasy books.

I am a UC Berkeley graduate student working with Jessica Lu on stellar and black hole populations in the Milky Way Galactic Center. I’m an alum of CU Boulder where I worked on Parker Solar Probe data with David Malaspina, as well as an alum of Dickinson College where I hold degrees in philosophy and Japanese studies. I am also the Scientist Liaison for a non-profit called Sea to Sky Explorers Association where we connect scientists, who need hard-to-get data, with volunteers who have technical skills like mountaineering and SCUBA diving. Outside of research I am a voracious reader, video gamer, textile crafter, and cat mom.

Hi! I am a graduate student in the Berkeley Astronomy Department. Currently I am running hydrodynamic simulations of supernovae in close binary systems. With my simulations we hope to explain objects such as ultra-long-period pulsars and supernovae with periodic undulations observed in their light curves. I am more broadly interested in radio transients, binary stars, and compact stellar objects. Outside of the department, I like to hike, run, play ultimate frisbee, and drag my telescope named Marvin around!

I am a graduate student in the UC Berkeley Astronomy department, where I apply computational and theoretical methods to study supermassive black holes. As a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves, I use population synthesis simulations to predict detections of continuous gravitational waves from the loudest supermassive black hole binaries and the anisotropies they induce in the stochastic gravitational wave background. These signatures serve as probes to better understand the distribution of supermassive black holes, as well as their environments, evolution, and merger histories. I also enjoy traveling, playing rugby, practicing yoga, and playing piano.

I am a second-year PhD student in the astronomy department. In my first year at Berkeley, I conducted research on the emission from turbulent mixing layers in the interstellar medium. I’m currently studying tidal disruption events, which happen when the gravitational force of a black hole overwhelms the self-gravity of a passing star and shreds it apart. I’m working on a model that explains the diversity of observations we have from TDEs, particularly in the optical, UV and X-ray energy bands. Outside of astronomy, I play a lot of tennis, run and hike.

I am a graduate student working with Professor Liang Dai on gravitational wave data analysis. I am currently interested in multi-messenger astronomy of double white dwarf systems with mHz gravitational waves and optical band light. Gravitational waves in this frequency band are not currently detectable, but they will be detectable in the mid-2030s using a triangular array of spacecraft that will orbit the sun behind the Earth called LISA. Using LISA and existing and future optical telescopes, we can learn information about these systems that we cannot measure with either data set alone, like the effect of tides on the orbital evolution. I am also very passionate about teaching. I have been teaching and developing Physics 188/288: Bayesian Data Analysis and Machine Learning for Physical Sciences and I hope to bring a course like it where I end up teaching in the future. In my free time, I enjoy playing double bass and electric bass, and playing board games and video games with my friends.

I received my B.S. in Physics from UC Santa Barbara in 2022 and am now a UC Berkeley graduate student studying how massive stars explode at the end of their lives as supernovae. I am primarily focused on observing rare supernovae and related phenomena in visual and infrared wavelengths to determine the properties of the explosion and constrain the physical origin of some of the most energetic events in the universe. When I’m not observing or performing data analysis, I enjoy hiking, skiing, and spending time with my cat.