Research Group

Graduate Students

Kevin Hall

• 2022-present, graduate student.
• 2024 Jun, first-author paper on ApJ, Hall & Fu, HI Ly-α Emission from a Metal-Poor Cool Stream Fueling an Early Dusty Starburst. For Python notebooks and data files, see github repo
• 2024 Jun, poster presentation at the 244th AAS Meeting, Madison, Wisconsin.
• 2023 Sep, poster presentation at Keck Science Meeting, Berkely, California
• 2022 Oct, presentation at the 2022 MARAC meeting, University of Arkansas, Fayetville: Detecting Extended Lyman Alpha Emission from the Circumgalactic Medium of a Submillimeter Galaxy and Two Background Quasars
• 2022 Jan, Joined group

Arran Gross

• 2017-2022: graduate student. Now postdoctoral researcher at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• 2022 Apr, Passed Final Exam. Congratulations, Dr. Gross!
• 2021 Sep, Passed Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam
• 2019 May, Defended M.S. Thesis
• 2017 Sep, Joined group
• Publications:
  • Ph.D. Thesis
  • Testing the Radio-Selection Method of Dual Active Galactic Nuclei in the Stripe 82 Field
  • X-ray Properties of Radio-Selected Dual Active Galactic Nuclei
  • SDSS-IV MaNGA: Galaxy Pair Fraction and Correlated Active Galactic Nuclei

Joshua Steffen

• 2017-2022: graduate student. Now system engineer at Boeing Intelligence & Analytics
• 2022 Apr, Passed Final Exam. Congratulations, Dr. Steffen!
• 2021 Sep, Passed Ph.D. Comprehensive Exam
• 2020 May, Defended M.S. Thesis
• 2017 Sep, Joined group
• Publications:
  • Ph.D. Thesis
  • SDSS-IV MaNGA: How Galaxy Interactions Influence Active Galactic Nuclei
  • SDSS-IV MaNGA: The Radial Profile of Enhanced Star Formation in Close Galaxy Pairs
  • SDSS-IV MaNGA: Galaxy Pair Fraction and Correlated Active Galactic Nuclei

Undergraduate Students

Sam Ponnada

• 2019-2021, now at Caltech for graduate study
• Did CLOUDY photoionization modeling for this paper: A Long Stream of Metal-Poor Cool Gas around a Massive Starburst Galaxy at z = 2.67 (2021ApJ…908..188F)

Jacob Isbell

• 2015-2018, now at MPIA for graduate study.
• Wrote a First-author paper on ApJ Letters: The Gas Fraction Evolution of Star-Forming Galaxies Traced by The CO Tully Fisher Relation (2018ApJ…869L..37I)
• Contributed to this ApJ paper: ALMA 870um observations of submillimeter galaxies along QSO sightlines (2017ApJ…844..123F)
• Wrote a successful VLA proposal: Flat-spectrum double radio cores: strong gravitational lenses? (VLA proposal #: VLA/18A-195)

Sophie Deam

• Aug 2016 - Aug 2017, graduated in Spring 2018.
• Contributed to a successful VLA proposal: VLA confirmatino of kpc-scale binary AGN in Stripe 82 (proposal #: VLA/18A-005)
• Wrote a python code to measure stellar absorption indices in optical spectra

Gravbox Team

• Aug 2016 - Jan 2018
• Nine Physics juniors and seniors in the course ASTR:3771/3772:
  • Algorithm: Jacob Isbell, Sophie Deam, Jianbo Lu
  • User Interface: Mason Reed, Erin Maier, Zach Luppen
  • Hardware: Ross McCurdy, Sadie Moore, Wyatt Bettis
• Development of the first augmented-reality sandbox to demonstrate gravitational dynamics in mass distributions sculptured with sand
• Gravbox Website
• AAS Abstract

Postdoc Researcher

Rui Xue

• 2017-2020, Postdoc Researcher. Now Software Engineer at National Radio Astronomical Observatory
• Led ALMA data reduction and analysis in this paper: A Long Stream of Metal-Poor Cool Gas around a Massive Starburst Galaxy at z = 2.67 (2021ApJ…908..188F)
• Led Bayesian analysis in this paper: The Gas Fraction Evolution of Star-Forming Galaxies Traced by The CO Tully Fisher Relation (2018ApJ…869L..37I)
• First-author paper: Flat Rotation Curves Found in Merging Dusty Starbursts at z=2.3 through Tilted-ring Modeling (2018ApJ…864L..11X)