Nadia Zakamska

"Nadia is an expert in supermassive black holes. She studies how they shape and influence the galaxies that host them, how they launch large galactic-scale winds, how they merge and how they vary in time."
- Anna-Christina Eilers

James Webb Space Telescope breakthroughs in galaxy formation
For years, we have been eagerly anticipating the promising capabilities that the JWST would bring to bear on scientific questions across all fields of astrophysics -- from exoplanets, to Milky Way structure, to cosmology. How is the reality of using data from JWST shaping up to meet expectations? In this talk I will discuss how the major technical leaps of JWST -- its spatial resolution, its sensitivity and its wavelength coverage -- are impacting astrophysics, specifically extragalactic astronomy and cosmology. My group is using JWST to unveil the evolution of supermassive black holes in centers of galaxies across cosmic time. I will present results from these programs, where JWST is revealing the complex physics of the interaction between the supermassive black holes and their host galaxies in unprecedented detail. Throughout the talk, I will present and discuss other extragalactic astronomy highlights from the first two years of JWST data.