THE GRADUATE EXPERIENCE
AT THE
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY
WHAT’S INSIDE
FACULTY................................................................................... 2
OUR NEWEST HIRES............................................................ 6
FACILITIES............................................................................. 12
RECENT ALUMNI.................................................................. 18
CURRENT GRADUATE STUDENTS..................................... 24
ANN ARBOR.......................................................................... 32
NEW PEOPLE,
NEW RESOURCES.
Welcome to Michigan Astronomy. We’ve undergone
an unparalleled transformation over the last several
years, and we want you to know about it.
We’ve hired new faculty; invested in world-class
telescopes, surveys, and computing resources;
and restructured the curriculum, all to prepare our
graduates for cutting-edge research in the top ranks
of academia.
We’ll introduce you to these elements in the pages
that follow. But the truth is that the best faculty and
telescopes are only valuable if you have access to them. In many ways that’s the real value of doing graduate
work at Michigan—we put students first.
Oleg Gnedin (left) and Jon Miller
What do we mean by “students first”? It’s the way we run our department and prioritize our resources. It
means as a graduate student, you’ll do all the things you’ll do as a professional—but with the support and
guidance of faculty mentors. You’ll write your own telescope proposals—often first where your priority is
guaranteed, like Magellan or MDM, and later where the competition is more challenging, like Hubble or
Spitzer. You’ll lead research teams and author papers with Michigan faculty, postdocs, and collaborators.
You’ll present so regularly, you’ll get good at it—several times a year within the department and at
conferences where you’ll expand your professional network. And you’ll do this all from day one with
increasing independence along the way.
Students first also means we’ll support you not just as an emerging researcher, but as a
person. We pride ourselves on an environment where faculty and students are fully
engaged in each other’s success.
It’s a model that is serving our students well. Recent alumni have gone on to
prestigious postdoctoral fellowships like Chandra/Einstein, Hubble, Sagan,
and NSF. Not only that, but they report that they genuinely enjoyed their
time at Michigan. But don’t let us tell you; see for yourself. We’ve asked our
newest faculty, recent alumni, and current graduate students to share their
experiences at the University of Michigan Department of Astronomy.
We hope you’ll appreciate their insights and decide to visit. There’s no better
way to see for yourself what our transformation can mean for your future.
Sincerely,
JON MILLER OLEG GNEDIN
Graduate Chair and Advisor
Graduate Recruiting and Admissions
“THE STUDENTS AND FACULTY
WERE EXCITED ABOUT THEIR
RESEARCH, BUT THEY WERE JUST
AS EXCITED ABOUT EACH OTHER’S
WORK. I KNEW IF I CAME HERE
PEOPLE WOULD BE FOCUSED ON
HELPING ME SUCCEED.”
—ANNE JASKOT, PHD STUDENT
MATT WALKER
PHD ‘07:
FA CULTY
“WHILE I WAS AT U-M,
THE DEPARTMENT ROUGHLY
DOUBLED IN SIZE. EACH YEAR
THERE WERE NEW HIRES WITH
FRESH PROJECTS AND CUTTING-EDGE
SCIENCE. EVERYTHING A YOUNG
ASTRONOMER NEEDS IS THERE—
ACCESS TO WORLD-CLASS
OBSERVATORIES AND BRIGHT,
ENERGETIC PROFESSORS
TO BE ADVISORS.”
Associate Professor Sally Oey visits with colleagues and students at the department’s
weekly tea and colloquium.
STARS, STAR
FORMATION,
AND
EXOPLANETS
EXTREME
ASTROPHYSICS
HUGH ALLER
JOEL BREGMAN
ELENA GALLO
JON MILLER
MATEUSZ RUSZKOWSKI
OUR FACULTY BY PRIMARY AREA
EXTRAGALACTIC
ASTRONOMY
AND
COSMOLOGY
Several professors span multiple areas;
they are listed in the area that represents
the largest portion of their work.
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ERIC BELL
GUS EVRARD
OLEG GNEDIN
MARIO MATEO
TIM MCKAY
CHRIS MILLER
SALLY OEY
DOUGLAS RICHSTONE
PATRICK SEITZER
MONICA VALLURI
FRED ADAMS
TED BERGIN
NURIA CALVET
LEE HARTMANN
JOHN MONNIER
A MAJOR PART OF OUR DE PARTME NTAL TRANSF ORMATION HAS
INVOLVE D OUR FACULTY. THRE E -QUARTE RS HAVE BE E N HIRE D IN
THE L AST 10 YE ARS—A F IGURE UNMATCHE D AMONG L E ADING
ASTRONOMY DE PARTME NTS. THIS HAS BROUGHT AN INF USION OF
F ORWARD-L OOKING RE SE ARCHE RS, AL L E AGE R TO ME NTOR THE
NE XT GE NE RATION OF SCHOL ARS.
Their observational and theoretical research spans important and emerging areas in astrophysics,
including cosmology, galaxy evolution, dark energy, dark matter, black holes, star and planet formation,
stellar feedback/galactic energy budgets, large-scale surveys, and instrumentation, among others.
Our faculty are helping design the major sky surveys, building advanced instruments for Magellan and
CHARA, writing annual review articles, conducting state-of-the-art modeling, and planning the next
generation of observatories.
Their scope is broad enough that you can change your focus while you’re here and know there’ll be
expertise to match. And it’s deep enough that you can form a thesis committee with whom you can
push boundaries and challenge conventional thinking.
Best of all, you’ll have access to this expertise. All our faculty advise and mentor students. In addition,
each advisor generally works with only one or two graduate students at a time. This means that
students are able to work closely with their mentors and benefit from sustained and direct interaction.
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Elena Gallo
Specialties:
OBSERVATIONAL EXTREME ASTROPHYSICS;
BLACK HOLES
WHAT SHE DOES: Elena Gallo is working to shed light on
the nature of low-luminosity, supermassive black holes
in the nearby universe. Using a comprehensive sample
of some 200 galaxies from the AMUSE surveys, she
plans to fill in much-needed information on their
role in galaxy evolution. By looking at black holes
with a range of masses, luminosities, and colors in a
variety of settings (dense clusters vs. field galaxies),
she is hoping to address a number of fundamental
questions: What is the luminosity distribution of black
holes in nearby galaxies? How do they evolve from
high- to low-luminosity? What proportion and types of
galaxies have them? How are they affected by galaxy
mergers? How do they affect their surroundings? This
work complements her ongoing research on jets from
nearby stellar-mass black holes.
DATA SHE’S USING: The AMUSE surveys combine data
from the Chandra X-ray Telescope with ground- and
space-based facilities (Very Large Array, Magellan,
Hubble, and Spitzer).
HER BACKGROUND: BS, University of Milan/Italy; PhD,
University of Amsterdam/Netherlands; Chandra
Fellow, UC/Santa Barbara; Hubble Fellow, MIT Kavli
Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.
FAVORITE BREAKTHROUGH: PhD research, published
in Nature, on the relationship between the energy
entering stellar-mass black holes from accretion of
gas and the energy flowing out through collimated
jets. Demonstrated that energy outflows were
comparable to energy inflows, but that much of the
outflow was in the form of kinetic energy vs. radiation.
Provided quantitative insight into the nature of black
holes’ contribution to local energy budgets.
WHY MICHIGAN?
“FROM MY EXPERIENCE, THIS IS AS GOOD AS IT GETS. IT IS THE
PERFECT BALANCE BETWEEN EXCELLENCE IN RESEARCH AND
SURROUNDING YOURSELF WITH PEOPLE WHO REALLY CARE
ABOUT YOUR EDUCATION.”
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Chris Miller
Specialties:
DATA MINING; GALAXY CLUSTERS
WHAT HE DOES: Chris Miller is a leader in
BIG-SURVEY INVOLVEMENT: “U-M has shown that it
astroinformatics—mixing computer science, advanced
statistics, and data mining to answer key cosmological
questions. His specialty is looking at galaxy clusters
through the field’s largest data sets to trace the
distribution of matter in the universe. After years
exploiting the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, he’s now
heavily involved in the Dark Energy Survey and is a
key player in the development of the Large Synoptic
Survey Telescope (LSST). The LSST was identified as
a highest priority in the National Research Council’s
decadal survey, and its unprecedented data set is
expected to lead to further insights into the nature of
dark energy and matter.
understands the future of astronomy by getting in
on the major surveys—like Pan-STARRS, the Dark
Energy Survey, and the LSST. We’re helping to build
the surveys, which means we’ll understand how to
get the most from the data. Our goal is sending out
graduate students who can work with this data as if
they grew up with it. That’s how they’ll generate new
discoveries—and that’s what will propel them to the
next level of faculty positions and postdocs.”
HIS BACKGROUND: BS, Penn State; PhD, University of
Maine. Postdoc at Carnegie-Melon bridging computer
science, statistics, and astronomy to create a highquality galaxy cluster catalog. Led data management
at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in
Chile. Hired at U-M under a presidential initiative for
advancing data mining research.
COLLABORATIONS: “The best way I’ve found to deal
with large, complex, high-dimensional data sets is
to collaborate. It’s still common for astronomers to
be working with an outdated statistical toolkit. But
at U-M, we have a weekly seminar series where we
discuss our problems with people in statistics and
computer science to be sure we’re using the most
advanced methods to examine our data.”
FAVORITE BREAKTHROUGH: Used his galaxy-cluster
WHY MICHIGAN?
“THE RESOURCES HERE ARE JUST SPECTACULAR. WE DO BIG-DATA
WORK ON THE FLUX HIGH-PERFORMANCE COMPUTING SYSTEMS
AND CAN FOLLOW UP WITH OBSERVATIONS ON THE WORLD’S
GREATEST TELESCOPES LIKE MAGELLAN.”
research to support the Hot Big Bang theory by
aligning findings from opposing cosmological epochs.
Miller was the first to see the signatures of sound
waves from the very early universe that were “frozen
into” the matter-density distribution we see today. His
analysis of the current universe synched neatly with
the acoustic oscillations of the early universe detected
in the cosmic microwave background. Demonstrated
the power of combining big-survey analysis and his
own observational data.
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Eric Bell
Specialties:
MAJOR SKY SURVEYS; GALAXY FORMATION
WHAT HE DOES: Eric Bell studies the physics of galaxy
formation, particularly how galaxies interact and
merge. He’s using large data sets from Pan-STARRS
and Hubble to determine what happens when
galaxies of different masses interact; how often such
interactions happen; and what the effects are on
galaxies’ shapes, star-formation activity, and dark
matter.
WHAT HIS COLLEAGUES SAY: “Eric is a mastermind in
acquiring large observational survey data and making
sense of it. He’s expert at finding what those billions of
data points really mean.”
HIS BACKGROUND: BS, University of Glasgow/UK; PhD,
University of Durham/UK; Postdoc at University of
Arizona on star formation and galaxies’ stellar massto-light ratios; led galaxy-evolution research at Max
Planck Institute for Astronomy/Germany.
FAVORITE BREAKTHROUGH: Provided the first
observational support for collisional formation of
elliptical galaxies. These galaxies were widely thought
to have been formed in the early universe because
they contain old stars, but precise dating was difficult.
Theorists challenged this view by proposing that
ellipticals were forming continuously through the
collision of spiral galaxies. Using a combination of HST
and COMBO-17 data, Bell helped settle the debate.
He showed that the number of elliptical galaxies was
increasing with time—and at a rate that fit neatly with
collision models. “When we asked the modelers for
predictions, they fell right on top of our data points,”
he says. “It’s not often you show observationally
that the existing consensus was wrong and that the
modelers were right. That was fun.”
WHY MICHIGAN?
“I HAD NO IDEA THIS WOULD BE MY DREAM JOB. BEING IN GERMANY,
I DIDN’T KNOW ABOUT ALL THE CHANGES AT U-M. IT WON ME OVER
IMMEDIATELY AS A VIBRANT PLACE WITH ASTRONOMERS WHO
REALLY KNOW THEIR STUFF.”
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PROFESSOR
CHRIS MILLER:
FACILITI ES
“BEING INVOLVED IN ALL
THE NEW LARGE SURVEYS, THE
INTERDISCIPLINARY COLLABORATION,
AND STUDENTS’ PRIVILEGED ACCESS
TO RESOURCES LIKE MAGELLAN—
THAT’S WHAT’S HELPING OUR
STUDENTS PUSH THE BOUNDARIES
OF SCIENCE AND BE COMPETITIVE
IN THE TOP RANKS
OF THE FIELD.”
TELESCOPES
MAGE L L AN & MDM: PRIVIL E GE D ACCE SS THAT SPANS THE SKIE S
Graduate students often can’t believe they receive “privileged access” to the world-class telescopes
in which U-M is a partner. This means PhD students have priority over faculty, postdocs, and
research scientists in observing for their thesis.
U-M’s access to the Southern Sky is through our partnership in the twin 6.5-meter Magellan
Telescopes in Chile. U-M’s 10% share in this premier facility means students can undertake projects
with long timelines and numerous targets. More than half of our PhD students from the last 10 years
have done work here.
In addition, students interested in instrumentation
can work with Professor Mario Mateo, who has just
completed a major upgrade to his ground-breaking
fiber spectrograph at Magellan. His original instrument
yielded a 100-fold increase in the number of targets
that could be sampled at a given time and allowed his
group to generate intriguing observational challenges
to the theory of cold dark matter (page 23). His new
version is even more powerful, flexible, and efficient. As
the major sky surveys generate new detections, Mateo’s
spectrograph is well-positioned to follow up on their
chemistry, temperature, and velocity. Current graduate
student Jeb Bailey is leading calibration efforts and
plans to use the instrument to search for and analyze
exoplanets.
U-M is also a partner in the MDM Observatory at Kitt Peak, Arizona. Its 2.4- and 1.3-meter
telescopes are equipped with an array of optical and infrared instruments, making it useful as both a
research and training platform. U-M’s portal to the Northern Sky, MDM offers a strong complement
to research at Magellan in areas from galaxy clusters to star formation.
HANDS-ON EXPERIENCE: During their time
here, students average more than eight
refereed publications, four conference trips,
and two Magellan visits.
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“As a student, I was shocked at the level of access I had to the
world’s best equipment. I spent something like 100 nights at
Magellan in Chile—right there with my hands on the telescope.”
—MATT WALKER, PHD ‘07
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Georgia State University’s CHARA
Array on Mount Wilson, California
INTE RF E ROME TRY E XPE RTISE THAT OPE NS DOORS AT CHARA
In addition, students have special access to the world’s top facility for optical/infrared interferometry, Georgia
State University’s CHARA Array on Mount Wilson, California. U-M is one of only a handful of institutions
worldwide with this level of access, thanks to Professor John Monnier’s work developing cutting-edge
instruments for this facility. These include:
lMIRC (THE MICHIGAN INFRARED COMBINER): Monnier’s newest update allows all six of CHARA’s telescopes
to work together, making it the most powerful combiner for infrared interferometry in the world. He and his
students have used MIRC to image the surfaces of a variety of stars for the first time (page 22).
lFRINGE-TRACKER: This instrument boosts MIRC’s performance, correcting for atmospheric
turbulence and helping to image faint objects like the planet-forming disks around young
stars.
lADAPTIVE OPTICS: Monnier and his graduate student Xiao Che are building part of
the “next big thing” at CHARA, a wavefront sensor for the array’s adaptive optics
upgrade. This will allow a nearly six-fold increase in the number of young stars that
can be imaged successfully by CHARA.
“U-M is a great place for students interested in instrumentation,” says Monnier. “This is
because Mario and I work on instruments that are technologically advanced but at the
scale of a single group. A lot of instrumentation projects in astronomy today involve big
contracts that are not accessible to students. But here, we’re able to come up with an idea,
design it, build it, and carry out experiments with it. You get hands-on experience at every step
in the process.”
“We have one of the best
collections of X-ray astronomers
in the country. The observations
we’re trying to do are not
straightforward; we can only
do them because my advisor is
so experienced and there’s so
much depth in the department.”
—MIKE ANDERSON, PHD STUDENT
SURVEYS
MULTIPLE WAVELENGTHS
“One of the things that made me an
attractive postdoc is my experience
observing in multiple wavelengths.
I’ve gotten data in X-ray with Chandra,
in ultraviolet with Hubble, in optical
with MIKE at Magellan, in near-infrared
with SpeX at NASA Infrared Telescope
Facility, and in mid-infrared from
Spitzer. This is ideal for trying to
understand how disks form, and I got
this experience at Michigan.”
—CATHERINE ESPAILLAT, PHD ‘09
U-M has made a strong commitment to the future of astronomy by investing in preferred access to major sky
surveys like the Dark Energy Survey and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. This means our faculty have
been involved in building the surveys, giving them unique insight into how to make best use of the data.
CLOUD COMPUTING
The department’s instrumentation, theoretical, data-mining, and image-analysis projects place high demands
on computing resources. That’s why we access the University’s new cloud environment, where the infrastructure
is continuously updated to stay ahead of demand—even from the data-intensive sky surveys.
KEY FEATURES:
lThe new Flux high-performance computing facility
lDirect connection to the NSF’s Teragrid/XSEDE open scientific-discovery infrastructure with petaflop
computing capabilities
lCampus-wide Value Storage with multi-terabyte data volumes
lInternal bandwidth within the Flux environment up to 25 Gbps (25x faster
than Ethernet)
lExternal connectivity to the National LambdaRail backbone at 10 Gbps
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ASTRO.LSA.UMICH.EDU
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A L UMN I
CATHERINE ESPAILLAT,
PHD ‘09:
“U-M IS A POWERHOUSE
IN STAR FORMATION. HAVING
PEOPLE LIKE NURIA CALVET,
LEE HARTMANN, TED BERGIN, JOHN
MONNIER, FRED ADAMS, AND
JON MILLER ON A THESIS COMMITTEE
TAKES YOUR RESEARCH TO THE
NEXT LEVEL. IT GIVES YOU THE
CREDIBILITY OF HAVING BEEN
TRAINED BY THE BEST.”
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ASTRO.LSA.UMICH.EDU
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Catherine Espaillat, PhD ‘09
John Tobin, PhD ‘11
USING SPITZER AND SUBMILLIMETER ARRAY TO EXAMINE DISK STRUCTURE
AND EVOLUTION IN CIRCUMSTELLAR DISKS
USING RADIO INTERFEROMETRY TO STUDY THE EARLIEST
STAGES OF STAR AND PLANET FORMATION
CURRENT POSITION: NSF Postdoctoral Fellow
transitioning to Sagan Postdoctoral Fellow, HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA)
PHD RESEARCH: Observational evidence for planet
formation around pre-main sequence stars
ADVISOR: Nuria Calvet
Catherine Espaillat was the first to identify pretransitional disks around low-mass, pre-main sequence
Prior to Espaillat’s thesis, researchers had identified stars
T Tauri stars (right). These disks, in which a central
surrounded by both full and transitional disks. Espaillat
was the first to identify pre-transitional disks (above) by
region is cleared between an inner and outer dust ring,
modeling detailed data from Spitzer and other sources.
lent strong evidence for dust clearing due to planet
formation vs. the competing photoevaporation theory.
Espaillat identified these pre-transitional structures using original observations from Spitzer and NASA’s
Infrared Telescope Facility with models co-developed by her advisor.
RESEARCH UPDATE: Espaillat’s predictions were recently confirmed by the observation of a young planet in
the pre-transitional disk of star LKCa 15.
SKILLS TRAINING: “At Michigan, I wrote all my own telescope proposals, and my fellow students did, too. This
is different than in a lot of departments where faculty write them and you just look over their shoulder. With
feedback from my advisor and an interesting topic, I was successful in getting time on Hubble and Spitzer—
where less than ~10% of proposals get accepted. It gives me confidence that I can get grants and support
myself professionally.”
CURRENT POSITION: Hubble Fellow, National Radio
Astronomy Observatory
PHD RESEARCH: Shape, composition, and dynamics of
protostars’ clouds and disks
CO-ADVISORS: Lee Hartmann and Ted Bergin
John Tobin studied the shape and motion of gas clouds around
protostars. Tobin’s findings challenged conventional thinking that
young stars’ clouds were spherical and well-ordered. Instead, using
infrared shadow images from Spitzer, he showed that these clouds were not
spherical but “filamentary,” or loosely cylindrical. In addition, radio observations of dense gas tracing molecules
showed that the velocity profiles of the clouds were governed not by rotation but by the inward motion of gas
toward the protostar. He showed that rotation only becomes significant much closer to the star than previously
thought, where it causes the cloud’s in-falling gas and dust to form an orbiting disk. His insights are helping to
transform understanding of the earliest phases of star formation.
WHY MICHIGAN?
PREPARATION
WHY MICHIGAN?
FACULTY EXPERTISE
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“U-M prepared me for the future because
I was trained in so many observational
methods—optical spectroscopy, infrared,
single-dish radio, and radio interferometry.
Interferometry is going to become even
more important as ALMA gives us a view of
the radio sky that’s as good as Hubble gets
for optical images. I know I’m prepared to
take advantage of these next-generation
facilities.”
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Ming Zhao, PhD ‘09
Matt Walker, PhD ‘07
USING GROUND-BASED PHOTOMETRY AND SPECTROSCOPY
TO DETECT AND CHARACTERIZE EXOPLANETS
DEVELOPING WAYS TO TEST THE COSMOLOGICAL MODEL
OF COLD DARK MATTER
CURRENT POSITION: Hubble Fellow, Harvard CfA
PREVIOUS POSITION: Postdoc, Cambridge Institute of Astronomy/UK
PHD RESEARCH: Observational approaches to dark matter
WHY MICHIGAN?
INSTRUMENTATION
EXPERTISE
“One of the reasons I came to U-M is because it has top
experts in interferometry. My advisor gave me lots of
training on telescopes and interferometric techniques.
This is critical because at CHARA, you’re in charge
and have to solve all your own problems. It also gave
me the skills and confidence as a brand-new postdoc
to approach technicians at Palomar with an algorithm
I developed to stabilize the telescope’s tracking. We
improved the guiding precision by a factor of ~10 and
made three detections of planetary atmospheres
shortly thereafter. This was all thanks to the training
I got at Michigan.”
ADVISOR: Mario Mateo
Matt Walker worked with his advisor to collect a data set of
unprecedented size that provided insight into the dark-matter
distribution in dwarf galaxies. They used Mateo’s custom-built
fiber spectrograph to increase the available sample from 100
to nearly 3,000 stars in four galaxies. They also collaborated
with the U-M statistics department to develop a method
for moving beyond mass measurements of dark matter to
assessing its distribution. Walker and Mateo provided the first
direct observational challenge to models’ predictions that dark
matter forms centrally concentrated cusps. Their evidence for a
more distributed “core” model raises important questions about the
assumption of cold dark matter.
WHY MICHIGAN?
RESEARCH
CALIBER
“By the end of my time at Michigan, I
remember thinking I could walk into a
conference and know I had the world’s best
data set for the galaxies we were looking
at. Ultimately that’s why I was an attractive
candidate on the job market; I was sitting
on data from which, even years later, we’re
continuing to extract new information.”
COLLABORATION: “Working with statisticians at U-M is what really let us
address problems that hadn’t been done before. U-M not only has a culture of
collaboration, it has formal structures that encourage it, as well. An internal grant
helped us put together a team from astronomy, statistics, and philosophy to collaborate on
dark matter.”
INSTRUMENTATION: “The other critical boost to our work was Mario’s spectrograph. With a vastly
CURRENT POSITION: Postdoc, Penn State
increased sample, we identified two independent stellar systems in the same galaxy. By measuring
their mass and how far each was from the galaxy’s center, we could determine the mass distribution.
This was a major insight that wouldn’t have been possible without this advance in instrumentation.”
PREVIOUS POSITION: NASA Postdoctoral Fellow, Jet Propulsion Lab
PHD RESEARCH: Precision observations of stars and exoplanets
ADVISOR: John Monnier
Ming Zhao worked with his advisor to push the limits of interferometry to get the first near-IR images of rapidly
rotating stars and very close binaries. His work made use of the Michigan Infrared Combiner (MIRC) developed
by Monnier for the CHARA long-baseline interferometer array. By using MIRC and aperture synthesis imaging,
Zhao was the first to resolve the well-known binary Beta Lyrae. The images were detailed enough to show the
primary star interacting with the disk of the secondary. Zhao was also among the first to image main-sequence
stars other than the Sun – the rapid-rotators Altair, Alderamin, and Rasalhague. He and Monnier revealed not
only the stars’ oblate shapes but also their uneven surface brightness. Zhao segued into exoplanets by studying
the hot Jupiter Upsilon Andromedae b, where he obtained the best upper limits of the planet/star contrast ratios
in the H band to date.
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MELISSA MCCLURE
PHD STUDENT:
GRADUATE
S TU DENTS
“THE DEPARTMENT
REALLY WORKS TO HELP YOU
GET WHAT YOU’LL NEED FOR A
CAREER IN ACADEMIA. FOR EXAMPLE,
I’M THE SCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLE
INVESTIGATOR ON AN UPCOMING
PROPOSAL AND WILL LEAD A
RESEARCH TEAM OF FACULTY AND
POSTDOCS – IT’S LIKE AN
APPRENTICESHIP WITH
A SAFETY NET.”
WHY MICHIGAN?
THE CUTTING
EDGE
“I came to U-M because of the caliber of
the faculty. I was especially interested in
the star-formation group. There’s Nuria, my
advisor, who’s an expert in modeling; John
Monnier, who’s a fantastic instrumentalist;
Ted Bergin, who does amazing things in
astrochemistry; and Lee Hartmann, who
spans observation and theory, and wrote
one of the leading books on the subject.
We’re in a race to publish with groups from
Caltech, Harvard CfA, and Europe—it’s truly
the cutting edge of things.”
PRESTIGIOUS POSTDOCS
Postdocs are an important indicator of a department’s
success. These include the types of fellowships
our recent graduates are getting (pages 18-23)
as well as the types of fellows who choose
Michigan Astronomy for their postdoctoral work.
Our 21 current postdocs include recipients of the field’s
most prestigious awards like NASA’s Hubble, Einstein,
and Sagan Fellowships.
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Melissa McClure
PHD STUDENT l NSF FELLOWSHIP
ADVISOR: Nuria Calvet
SPECIALTY: Evolution of particles in protostellar envelopes and circumstellar disks
PHD RESEARCH: Melissa McClure is looking at the clouds and early disks around young stars to gain insight into
how diffuse dust grains crystallize and lump together—ultimately creating conditions for planets to form. She
is looking at both the physical changes in the particles—how they go from amorphous dust grains to highly
structured silicate crystals—and also the transport mechanisms—how these crystals are carried to the outer
reaches of the disk. McClure is taking advantage of the crystals’ unique spectral signatures to explore their
location, density, and movement within the disk. She is using Spitzer data to determine the composition of the
disks’ planet-forming regions; Herschel data to examine their outer regions; and Magellan data to assess stellar
parameters and the innermost disk edge. Using models co-developed by her advisor, McClure hopes to further
clarify where in these disks terrestrial planets are likely to form.
ASTRO.LSA.UMICH.EDU
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WHY MICHIGAN?
COLLABORATION
“This is a great young department
that’s very driven. We’re also strong
in the field of black holes, both
observationally and theoretically. My
advisor freely shares research ideas
and data, and organizes meetings
so I can see what his postdocs are
doing and vice versa. One of them
just pointed out a new test I could do
to make my paper stronger. I really
appreciate that kind of support.”
WHY MICHIGAN?
CONNECTIONS
“This is an incredibly supportive department.
A great example is students’ annual research
presentations. What’s special about Michigan is
that the faculty attend these talks—not just your
advisor, but most of the faculty. This means that
every professor will know your name and know
where you are with your research and how they
can help if you need it.”
Mike Anderson
PHD STUDENT l NSF FELLOWSHIP
ADVISOR: Joel Bregman
Ashley King
PHD STUDENT l NASA EARTH AND SPACE SCIENCE FELLOWSHIP
ADVISOR: Jon Miller
SPECIALTY: Relationship between black hole inflows and outflows
PHD RESEARCH: Ashley King is researching how accretion onto black holes, which is seen in X-ray, affects the
production of jets, which is seen in radio. Rather than looking at individual measurements across multiple
galaxies, King is comparing inflows and outflows within a single galaxy over multiple points in time. “We’re
looking at these observations simultaneously,” she says, “so, if we see a flare in the X-ray, we can determine if
we’ll see a flare in the radio at the same time or later indicating jet production.” She is interested ultimately in
what is driving these jets, from magnetic fields to radiation pressure. She plans next to compare various sizes
of black holes to determine how mass affects their outflows.
RESEARCH UPDATE: King and her advisor recently detected the fastest wind ever recorded from a stellar-mass
black hole. Their findings were surprising because the wind’s speeds matched those measured only for
supermassive black holes, and the wind appeared to be carrying away up to 95 percent of the matter in the
surrounding disk.
28
SPECIALTY: Hot halos
PHD RESEARCH: Mike Anderson is using X-ray observations to test theoretical predictions that large galaxies
formed from and are surrounded by diffuse hot gas. These “hot halos” have been difficult to detect, even with
the best X-ray telescopes, but Anderson and his advisor have been the first to detect one around a spiral galaxy
by employing novel observational techniques. Using estimates of the halo’s mass, density, and temperature,
Anderson was able to rule it out as a solution to the enigmatic problem of galaxies’ “missing baryons.” He
demonstrated that the galaxy’s missing matter could not be accounted for in a halo of the mass they detected.
He plans to work with Professor Oleg Gnedin on simulations that will further connect his observations to
theories of galaxy formation.
FAVORITE PROGRAM FEATURE: Astrocoffee. “Every day for a half-hour, the department gets together over coffee to
discuss important new papers. We cover two a day, and everybody presents once or twice a semester. We get to
hear from a range of experts, and I’ve learned a lot about trends in the field and what a good paper should look
like. It’s been incredibly valuable.”
FACULTY BREADTH: “My thesis committee is full of people who work on hot halos from different perspectives:
X-ray astronomers; people who do simulations; and people who do observations of the early universe. I listen to
them debate different ways to look at the topic and get a much fuller picture of how to connect my observations
to theory.”
ASTRO.LSA.UMICH.EDU
29
WHY MICHIGAN?
RESEARCH FROM DAY ONE
“Doing research right away is important. I’ve
been doing research since I first got here, and
I was encouraged to go to conferences early
on to present my results. So even though I’ve
just finished classes, I’m already active in the
astronomy community.”
WHY MICHIGAN?
COLLEGIALITY
Dan Gifford
PHD STUDENT l NSF FELLOWSHIP
“From the first time I visited, I fell in love with the
program. The faculty are warm and welcoming, and
there’s a tight bond among the graduate students.
By the time I was here a year, I’d had at least one
conversation with every faculty member—and
when we give talks, faculty approach us afterward
and suggest new dimensions to make our results
more useful or accepted. With the grad students,
we all work on the same floor, and go to happy
hours and film festivals. It’s a happy, relaxed
department. Grad school is demanding, so that
support system is really important.”
Anne Jaskot
PHD STUDENT l NSF FELLOWSHIP
ADVISOR: Chris Miller
ADVISOR: Sally Oey
SPECIALTY: Galaxy clusters
SPECIALTY: Gas budgets in galaxies and star formation
PHD RESEARCH: Dan Gifford is working with his advisor, Chris Miller (page 8), to make the caustic method a more
common tool for measuring the mass of galaxy clusters. A currently underused complement to techniques
like weak-lensing and measuring the X-ray temperature of a cluster’s hot gas, the caustic method relies on the
position and relative velocities of a cluster’s constituent galaxies. Gifford and Miller are hoping to make the
method more accessible to astronomers because of its usefulness in the context of large surveys like the LSST,
Dark Energy Survey, and Pan-STARRS. They are aiming to identify a scaling relation between a cluster’s mass
and its galaxy count that will help astronomers create mass estimates for clusters too distant for the other
techniques to be effective.
PHD RESEARCH: Anne Jaskot is using radio data to examine what causes intense star formation in galaxies.
While researchers have previously looked in detail at individual galaxies, she is looking instead at large
populations of both starbursting and non-starbursting galaxies in the hopes of identifying representative
insights. She’s combining data on neutral hydrogen from the radio-based ALFALFA survey with optical
information on galaxies’ star-formation properties. Because evidence suggests that the total amount of
neutral hydrogen in both galaxy types is the same, Jaskot is interested in learning whether intense star
formation is the result of the distribution of gas in a galaxy, galaxy structure, or mergers that provide a sudden
large influx of gas.
FLEXIBILITY: “I really appreciate how supportive faculty are of following your own interests. My advisor’s
interests are related but somewhat different from mine. She’s been very good at encouraging me where our
interests overlap and connecting me with other professors who have related interests. This flexibility has
allowed me to branch out into areas that are new to me like radio astronomy.”
30
ASTRO.LSA.UMICH.EDU
31
ANN ARBOR
The city of Ann Arbor combines the charm and quality of life
of a small town with the range of educational, cultural, and
recreational opportunities of a larger city. An array of music,
theater, restaurants, shops, museums, parks, and special events
make Ann Arbor an eclectic and desirable destination.
Highlights include the Ann Arbor Art Fair, the Summer
Festival, and Big Ten athletics.
In addition, the area is served by numerous parks.
There is an arboretum/botanical garden right on campus;
13 Metroparks provide a 25,000-acre greenbelt for year-round
outdoor activities; and wooded trails like the
17-mile Pinckney-Potawatomi are ideal for hiking,
mountain biking, and cross-country skiing.
Ann Arbor regularly receives
national attention as one of the best
places to live. Recent honors include:
#1 College Town, Forbes Magazine
#1 Most Educated City, The Business
Journals
“20 Most Innovative Cities”,
2thinknow
32
P ROGR A M M E C H A N IC S
STRUCTURE:
Total program length is
generally 5 to 5-1/2 years.
The first two include research
projects, classes, and the
opportunity to teach.
The remaining time is
devoted to thesis research.
APPLICATION
DEADLINE: First week
of January.
FUNDING:
Students receive a stipend,
plus health and dental coverage.
We also support student
applications for prestigious
external fellowships.
THE RANKINGS
Rankings are only part of the story, but we’re pleased that they
capture a rising department at a top-tier university.
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN:
#1
US public institution, The Times of London 2011 Higher
Education Supplement
#4
national public university, US News & World Report 2011
DEPARTMENT OF ASTRONOMY:
#6
in research quality/departmental impact, The Science
Impact of Astronomy PhD-Granting Departments in the
United States by Anne Kinney of NASA (2008 special
guidance article for prospective graduate students)
PHOTO CREDITS
Cover: NASA/JPL-Caltech; pages 1, 5, 7, 8, 11, 27-32: U-M Photo Services; page 2: NASA, ESA and J. Hester (ASU); page 4: Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO & ESA; Infrared: NASA/
JPL-Caltech/B. Williams (NCSU); page 6: NASA/CXC/ITA/INAF/J.Merten et al, Lensing: NASA/STScI; NAOJ/Subaru; ESO/VLT, Optical: NASA/STScI/R.Dupke; page 9: courtesy of Dan
Coe; page 10: Gemini Observatory/AURA/Eric Bell; page 12: NASA, ESA, SAO, CXC, JPL-Caltech, and STScI; page 14: courtesy of Matias del Campo, X-ray (NASA/CXC/M. Karovska
et al.); Radio 21-cm image (NRAO/VLA/J.Van Gorkom/Schminovich et al.), Radio continuum image (NRAO/VLA/J. Condon et al.); Optical (Digitized Sky Survey U.K. Schmidt Image/
STScI); page 15: Kristin Woodley; page 16: Mark Boster, Los Angeles Times, January 2011; page 18: NASA, ESA, R. O’Connell (University of Virginia), F. Paresce (National Institute for
Astrophysics, Bologna, Italy), E. Young (Universities Space Research Association/Ames Research Center), the WFC3 Science Oversight Committee, and the Hubble Heritage Team
(STScI/AURA); page 20: NASA/JPL/Caltech; page 21: NASA/JPL-Caltech/J. Tobin (University of Michigan); page 24: NASA/CXC/M.Weiss; page 26: ESO/NASA/JPL-Caltech/S. Kraus
TO LEARN MORE,
PLEASE VISIT US AT:
The University of Michigan
Department of Astronomy
830 Dennison Building
500 Church Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1042
734-764-3440
astro.phd.inquiries@umich.edu
astro.lsa.umich.edu
THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN:
Julia Donovan Darlow, Ann Arbor; Laurence B. Deitch, Bingham Farms; Denise Ilitch, Bingham Farms; Olivia P. Maynard, Goodrich; Andrea
Fischer Newman, Ann Arbor; Andrew C. Richner, Grosse Pointe Park; S. Martin Taylor, Grosse Pointe Farms; Katherine E. White, Ann Arbor;
Mary Sue Coleman, ex officio
NONDISCRIMINATION POLICY STATEMENT
The University of Michigan, as an equal opportunity/affirmative action employer, complies with all applicable federal and state laws
regarding nondiscrimination and affirmative action. The University of Michigan is committed to a policy of equal opportunity for
all persons and does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, national origin, age, marital status, sex, sexual orientation, gender
identity, gender expression, disability, religion, height, weight, or veteran status in employment, educational programs and activities,
and admissions. Inquiries or complaints may be addressed to the Senior Director for Institutional Equity, and Title IX/Section 504/ADA
Coordinator, Office of Institutional Equity, 2072 Administrative Services Building, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1432, 734-763-0235, TTY
734-647-1388. For other University of Michigan information call 734-764-1817.
© 2012 The Regents of the University of Michigan
MM&D 110572