Isaac Malsky (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) Aditya Tamar (Max Planck Institute) Silvia Onorato (Gemini Observatory) Talk titles, abstracts, and biographies coming soon.  

Sam Cutler (Tufts University) Biography: Sam is an Astronomy Postdoctoral Researcher at Tufts University with the JWST Cycle 4 MINERVA team. He obtained his Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in September 2025 advised by Kate Whitaker. In present research, Sam focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies via large photometric

Note: Due to severe weather, this event will be held exclusively via Zoom Tirso Marin Gilabert (Harvard CfA) Viscous or Turbulent? Interpreting XRISM’s Coma Puzzle with High-Resolution Simulations The evolution of galaxy clusters is strongly shaped by the physics of the intracluster medium (ICM), where processes such as turbulence, mixing, and alaxy–ICM interactions drive much

Ivelin Georgiev (Stockholm University and Open University at Israel) Title and abstract coming soon. Biography: Ivelin’s research explores how the 21-cm signal can reveal the properties of the first light sources and how combining it with other observations of the intergalactic medium can deepen our understanding of the astrophysics of the first stars and galaxies

Institute Holiday- No Monday Afternoon Science Talks

Barry Chiang (Yale University) Dynamics of Dark Matter Subhalos: Velocity Anisotropy, Numerical Convergence, and Cluster Lenses In the hierarchical structure formation model of ΛCDM cosmology, dark matter halos grow by accreting lower-mass subhalos and exhibit non-trivial velocity anisotropy due to aspherical collapse and radial mass infall. Once accreted, the tidal evolution of these subhalos is

Vasily Kokorev (University of Texas at Austin) Ghost in the Cocoon: Unmasking the Dense Gas Shell Around a Little Red Dot Little Red Dots have quickly become one of the most debated discoveries of the JWST era, showing unexpectedly strong breaks and absorption features that hint at buried AGN growing inside extremely dense gas. In

Mitigating Radio Frequency Interference in Radio Astronomy: Recent Progress at Brown Radio frequency interference (RFI) is a pressing challenge for radio astronomy, particularly for experiments targeting the Cosmic Dark Ages and the Epoch of Reionization. As the number of artificial radio emitters continues to grow, RFI has become increasingly difficult to avoid. Significant research effort

Rebecca Surman, University of Notre Dame Victoria DiTomasso, Harvard CfA

Yixian Chen, UC Santa Cruz Unorthodox planet-disk interaction: Eccentricity, Turbulence and Winds The classical circumplanetary disk (CPD) pattern is prograde – in other words, aligned with the Protoplanetary disk. Using 3D global hydrodynamic simulations, we show that when planet eccentricity is large enough, the CPD can become retrograde due to impact velocity relative to the

Richard Pan, Tufts University Pipit Triani, Harvard CfA  

Wata Chanita Tubthong (Tufts University) Small circumbinary planets are truly rarer than small single-star planets All circumbinary planets (CBPs) confirmed up-to-date are gas giants. No circumbinary super Earth has been discovered, despite the super Earths making up ~80% of the planet population around single stars. This is owing to the inherently biased nature of the

Sabrina Berger (The University of Melbourne) Title: Simulations Meet JWST to Understand AGN at Cosmic Dawn Abstract: The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is transforming our understanding of active galactic nuclei (AGN) in the early Universe. For the first time, astronomers have detected and characterized galaxies hosting luminous quasars at z > 6. JWST has

Scott Lucchini, Harvard CfA Title: The Circumgalactic Medium at 200 pc Abstract: The circumgalactic medium (CGM) plays a crucial role in the baryon cycle by mediating all of the gas flows in and out of the galaxy. However, simulating this region is difficult due to its immense volume and low densities. Fixed spatial resolution is

Myles Sherman (Caltech) Searching for Long-Period Radio Transients with the DSA-110 In this talk, I will describe the design and commissioning tests for the DSA-110 Not-So-Fast Radio Burst (NSFRB) search pipeline, a 1.4 GHz image-plane single-pulse search sensitive to 134 ms-160.8 s radio bursts. Extending the pulse width range of the DSA-110 Fast Radio Burst

Alexa Gordon (Northwestern University) Revealing the Progenitor(s) of Fast Radio Bursts through their Environments Abstract: Fast radio bursts (FRBs) are a new class of highly energetic, extragalactic transients. Despite thousands of FRBs detected to date, many fundamental questions remain, including their progenitor(s) and emission mechanism(s). The ability to localize FRBs to sub-arcsecond precision–pinpointing them to

Peter Scherbak (Caltech) Title: Rapid Binary Mass Transfer: Circumbinary Outflows and Angular Momentum Losses across Mass Transfer Rates Abstract: High rates of stable mass transfer (MT) occur in some binary star systems, producing luminous transients and driving circumbinary outflows. We perform hydrodynamical simulations of a donor star transferring mass to a point-mass accretor across a range of

Philippe Yao: Theoretical Models for Repeating Nuclear Transients: Stellar Orbits, Disk Encounters & Mass Transfer Barry Ginat: The Small-Scale Limit of the Cold-Dark-Matter Power-Spectrum

Ajay Gill (MIT AeroAstro) Title: A study of galaxy clusters and filaments with the Sunyaev–Zeldovich effect using multifrequency cosmic microwave background observations Abstract: Galaxy clusters are the largest gravitationally bound objects in the universe. Their study probes the evolution of large-scale structure in the universe. I will discuss a new methodology to study the thermal

Karthik Yadavalli (Harvard/CfA) Title: Radiative Transfer Modeling Supernovae to Understand Progenitor Physics Abstract: The specifics of the final-stage evolution and death of a massive star are not perfectly known. In particular, how the population of stars that lead to type Ib and Ic SNe (SNe Ib/c) experience core-collapse and ultimately explode as supernovae is so

Junehyong Jeon: Formation and Evolution of Supermassive Black Holes in the Early Universe Vedant Chandra: Tales from the Milky Way’s Distant Horizon

Chun Huang (Washington University in St. Louis) Linking Multiwavelength Pulsar Emission to Super-Dense Physics inside neutron star The utilization of Pulse Profile modeling techniques could simultaneously provide measurements for Neutron star Mass Radius and offer insights into their hotspot distribution. Presently, these methodologies rely on meta models of the equation of state (EOS) and employ

Talk 1: Yilun Ma, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Searching for little red dots across redshifts Little red dots (LRD) are a population of red, compact, broad-line objects discovered by JWST at 5<z<8. They show a characteristic V-shaped SED, where a blue UV continuum is followed by a steep red rise in optical, and they are otherwise not

Talk: Sunil Simha, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Cosmic accountancy: Baryon budgeting using FRB dispersion measures Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) are being detected and precisely localized (~<1’’) at an accelerating pace due to the efforts of several FRB experiments worldwide. Chief among these is the CHIME telescope and its outriggers, which are well on their way to localizing

Talk: Dave Clements, 3:00pm – 3:30pm The deepest Herschel-SPIRE Field We present the first results from the deepest far-IR observations ever made. These come from the Herschel-SPIRE dark field, a region observed multiple times over the entire course of the Herschel mission for calibration and instrument health purposes. Our final images combine 141 separate observations

Talk 1: Salyang Zhang, 3:00pm – 3:30pm The imprint of primordial black holes over cosmic history My presentation will discuss the role of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) as one of DM components throughout cosmic history. I will specifically focus on PBH candidates in the solar mass range of approximately 10-100 $M_{\odot}$ and massive PBHs of $10^6

Talk: Christopher Lindsay, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Stellar astrophysics and galactic archaeology with asteroseismology The analysis of stellar oscillations, known as asteroseismology, has enabled detailed studies of the interior structures of stars, particularly subgiants and red giants. Since many areas of astrophysics rely on stellar modeling, asteroseismology provides a vital tool for improving our understanding of how

Talk : Marie Lau, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Probing Quasar/galaxy evolution, feeding, and feedback: Extremely Red Quasars (ERQs) and the Quasar-Associated Inflows Legacy Survey (QUAILS) My research focuses on understanding the evolution, feeding, and feedback processes in quasar-host galaxies, particularly through extremely red quasars (ERQs) and quasar-associated absorption lines. First, I study ERQs at cosmic-noon redshifts. Using

Talk : Jesse Han, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Hypervelocity Stars Trace a Supermassive Black Hole in the Large Magellanic Cloud Hypervelocity stars (HVSs) are produced by the Hills mechanism when a stellar binary is disrupted by a supermassive black hole (SMBH). The HVS Survey detected 21 unbound B-type main-sequence stars in the Milky Way’s outer halo that

Talk 1: Tiger Hsiao, 3:00pm – 3:30pm First star clusters observed in the early universe with JWST and gravitational lensing Understanding when, how, and why the first generation of stars and galaxies formed is crucial for revealing the early chapters of cosmic history. To reveal the first chapter of cosmic history and understand our cosmic

Talk 1: Grant Donnelly, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Touched by fire: insights from PAHs in active galaxies The space between the stars in galaxies is sprinkled with particles of condensed matter collectively referred to as “dust”. Absorbing large amounts of starlight and consequently glowing in the infrared, dust is a critical component of interstellar radiative transfer,

Talk 1: Ben Lakeland, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Using the sun to find earth twins Radial-velocity (RV) spectroscopy is a vital tool in exoplanet science, both as an independent detection method and as follow-up characterization for transiting exoplanets. State-of-the-art RV spectrographs have the instrumental sensitivity to detect sub-meter-per-second variations necessary to detect small exoplanets. Despite this,

Talk: Charlie Mpetha, 3:00pm – 3:30pm The infall region of galaxy clusters as a complementary probe to cluster abundance Galaxy cluster abundance measurements provide a classic test of cosmology. However, they exhibit a strong degeneracy between the amplitude of density fluctuations σ8, and the matter density Ωm, as do other similar low-redshift tests such as

Talk: Minori Shikauchi, 3:00pm – 3:30pm A blind search for gamma-ray burst afterglows with CHIME Short gamma-ray bursts (sGRBs) are energetic and explosive events in the Universe.  The coincident detection of GRB 170817A and a gravitational wave (GW) from a binary neutron star (BNS) merger raises questions about the conditions in which BNS mergers cause

Talk 1: Shreya Anand, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Testing whether Collapsars Synthesize r-process elements A rare sub-class of stripped envelope massive-star explosions, dubbed broad-lined Ic supernovae (SNe Ic-BL) have been highlighted as one of the potential sites of r-process nucleosynthesis capable of enriching our solar neighborhood with heavy elements. Here we present the first systematic study

Talk 1: Tom Rose, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Observing AGN fueling via molecular absorption lines Molecular gas plays a significant role in powering AGN. Unfortunately, observing this gas on small spatial scales is difficult because it can normally only be seen en masse through emission lines. I will present observations of molecular gas in several massive

Talk 1: Haowen Zhang, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Trinity: self-consistent dark matter halo-galaxy-supermassive black hole connection from z=0-10, and predictions on high-z quasars in the JWST era We present TRINITY, a flexible empirical model that self-consistently infers the statistical connection between dark matter haloes, galaxies, and supermassive black holes (SMBHs). TRINITY is constrained by galaxy observables

Talk 1: Lalitha Sairam, 3:00pm – 3:30pm When stars misbehave: the impact of stellar activity on exoplanet research and the need for a public forecast The study of exoplanets has unveiled a diverse array of worlds beyond our solar system. However, the detection and characterization of exoplanets remain challenging due to the magnetic activity of

Talk 1: Xiurui Zhao, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Active galactic nuclei in the NuSTAR era Active galactic nuclei (AGN), which represent the rapidly growing phase of the supermassive black holes (SMBH), radiate across the whole electromagnetic spectrum from radio to Gamma-rays. X-rays, which are seen in most AGN, are an important tool to study the physics

Talk 1: Evan Bauer, 3:00pm – 3:30pm Modeling runaway donor stars to understand supernovae in white dwarf binaries In the quest to understand the physics and astrophysics of how Type Ia supernovae occur, we have recently turned attention toward better understanding the physics of mass transfer and detonation in double white dwarf binary systems. These