Katherine Whitaker
University of Massachusetts, MA·Astronomy & Astrophysics·Early-career
Early in cosmic history, massive galaxies sat in huge reservoirs of gas fed by the cosmic web, the large-scale network of matter in the universe. That gas should have kept them forming stars steadily.
- Fields
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Physics
- Topics
galaxy formation
galaxy evolution
massive galaxies
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Jan 2029
What they work on
- Map large statistical samples of massive galaxies and their environments across cosmic history using the Prime Focus Spectrograph on the Subaru Telescope.
- Trace the cold gas in these galaxies through dust emission measured with the TolTEC camera on the Large Millimeter Telescope, linking gas supply to star formation in different environments.
- Analyze mock galaxies from cosmological simulations that include dust physics with the same methods used on real data, to calibrate observations and control systematic uncertainties.
- Study what caused cosmic reionization and how the first galaxies formed and quenched, through student projects at the Cosmic Dawn Center using JWST, Hubble, and ALMA data and hydrodynamical simulations.
More about the research
Yet within about three billion years after the Big Bang, half of these massive galaxies had stopped forming stars. This research asks how the earliest and most massive galaxies assembled so quickly and why they shut down so early. It combines telescope surveys with computer simulations of the universe.
Why it matters
This is basic research into how galaxies, including the most massive ones, formed and stopped forming stars in the early universe. Joining wide-area surveys with simulations calibrated for systematic errors adds a physical picture of galaxy assembly from cosmic dawn to today. It could inform future efforts to interpret observations of early galaxies.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Vivian U-
California Institute of Technology, CA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Map hot ionized and warm molecular gas in a representative sample of merging (U)LIRG galaxies using new Keck and JWST integral-field spectroscopy, which records a spectrum at every point of an image.
Min Yun
University of Massachusetts, MA·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Sustain operations of the 50-meter Large Millimeter Telescope Alfonso Serrano as a US-Mexico collaboration and maintain US community access, bridging to a longer-term partnership.
Kate Rowlands
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Astronomy & Astrophysics
Map recent star-formation histories in nearby galaxies using full spectral fitting of KILOGAS data, and compare them with current interstellar gas to see how star formation depends on available gas.
The school
University of Massachusetts: 28 labs on PI Pages, $282M a year on research, 337 research doctorates a year.
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