Scientific Research
Below is a list of active research programs that take advantage of major ground and space-based observatories and are focused at understanding on galaxies have formed and evolved over cosmic time to create the population of mature galaxies we find in the nearby universe. Studens/Postdocs: Please feel free to contact me if you are interested in working in my group.
Star Formation in Radio Survey
The Star Formation in Radio Survey (SFRS) is a multi-frequency (3, 15, 33 GHz) VLA continuum imaging survey of nearby galaxies on ~100 pc scales aimed at accurately characterizing their star formation properties. These data are additionally being combined with ALMA molecular line imaging from PHANGS to investigate how local gas properties compare with current star formation conditions. This program aims to characterize the main physical drivers affecting the star formation process on the scales of individual giant molecular clouds (e.g., turbulence, cosmic-ray pressure, radiative feedback, etc.), as well as try to identify the physical origin of anomolous microwave emission.
The goal of the VLA Frontier Fields Survey is to characterize the radio continuum emission of high-redshift galaxies by leveraging massive clusters that magnify intrinsically faint, distant systems (see our press release). This survey enriches the legacy of the Hubble Frontier Fields (HFF) by providing deep 3 and 6 GHz images of the MACSJ0416-24, MACSJ0717+37, and MACSJ1149+22 galaxy clusters, achieving a depth of ~1uJy/bm and reaching sub-arcsec resolution. The VLA Frontier Fields project is a public legacy survey, and the image and catalog products are freely available.
The VLA 10GHz Survey of GOODS-N is the first high-resolution (0.22 arcsec), high-frequency observational campaign to fully map an extragalactic deep field at sub-uJy depth. The overarching goal of this VLA Large Program is to better trace the star formation history of the Universe. Surveying the extragalactic sky at 10GHz has the advantage of yielding higher angular resolution imaging while probing thermal (free-free) radiation of high-redshift galaxies, which is more directly proportional to the rate of massive star formation.