Olivia Aspegren

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.