People

Professor
585-475-7179
jhkpci@rit.edu
Research Interests: Stellar Evolution, Young Stars, Planetary Nebulae

Michael Richmond
Professor
Director of the RIT Observatory
585-475-2538
mwrsps@rit.edu

 jtb1435@rit.edu

for Srikanthan RameshPh.D. Student

Jesse's research focuses on the molecular chemistry and heating of Planetary Nebulae. Currently, he studies the chemistry and heating of planetary nebulae using Radio telescope observations to understand their dependence on high-energy radiation fields from their central stars.

 igc5972@rit.edu
for Jakob Hamilton

Ph. D. Student

Isabella is currently working on coding a pipeline to reduce spectroscopic data taken by the twin Gemini telescopes. With the reduced spectroscopy, she has already measured redshifts which are considered more precise than existing photometric redshifts. She is also working on measuring star formation rates from emission line fluxes to study the star formation rate density relationship with respect to redshift. 

 alf7723@rit.edu

Ph.D. Student

Ashley's main research interest is in Active Galactic Nuclei (AGN). Her current research project involves using the technique of reverberation mapping in order to constrain the size of the dusty torus in AGN.

  ctm3357@rit.edu 

M.S./B.S. Student

Christina's research interests involve studying galaxy mergers and the role they play in the evolution of the galaxy. Currently she is focusing on the connections between galaxy mergers and active galactic nuclei in the CANDELS fields, using visual classification data on the morphologies of galaxies as well as radio, IR, and X-ray data to search for AGN signatures. Future work involves expanding to investigate the effects of mergers on star formation rates.

 crr9508@rit.edu 

Ph.D. Student

Caitlin works on characterizing the morphologies of very high redshift galaxies in order to identify galaxy mergers, which are one of the driving forces of galaxy evolution. She is using simulated James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) images to develop a new and reliable method for identifying mergers via quantitative measurements and visual classification as a function of image depth, filter and perspective in preparation for real images from JWST. JWST is the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and will probe higher redshifts than HST with higher resolution and quality. 

  eas7266@rit.edu

Ph.D. Student

Ekta is interested in the role of galaxy interactions and mergers in the evolution of galaxies over cosmic time. Specifically, she is conducting a statistical analysis using multi-wavelength CANDELS and COSMOS Survey data to estimate the effects of these interaction on star formation and AGN activity of galaxies over z~ 0-3. She has also worked on spectroscopic observations of galaxies obtained using the DEIMOS instrument on the Keck telescope in Hawaii to estimate the spectroscopic redshifts of potentially interacting high redshift galaxies.

   cxw1314@rit.edu 

Physics B.S. Student

Caleb is using the Voronoi Tesselation technique to create environmental density maps in the CANDELS fields and investigate the evolution of environmental trends for star formation and AGN activity.

AST PhD, 2017
Currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Southhampton

 jpg2151@rit.edu 
for Srikanthan Ramesh

B.S./M.S. Student

drm4487@rit.edu 

Physics B. S. Student

Dale's work focuses on analyzing galaxy spectral energy distributions in order to quantify the contribution of AGN.

 mls6495@rit.edu 

AST M.S., 2019
Currently Planetarium Supervisor and Director at Columbia Public Schools' Planetarium

Meaghann studies individual stellar population physical properties in very distant galaxies. Astronomers observe a morphological change when looking at galaxies near and far - there are many more elliptical galaxies in the nearby universe and many more star forming, disk-like galaxies in the distant universe. My goal is to understand why this star formation stops and galaxies change their shape. By looking at small scale properties of these star forming distant galaxies, we can look for clues as to why star formation is ongoing and has ceased.