Hello! I'm Eliza Diggins, a first-year Ph.D. student and Chancellor's Fellow in the Astronomy Department at UC Berkeley. I study the dynamics of some of the largest structures in the universe and what they can tell us about fundamental physics and cosmic evolution. My work combines hydrodynamical simulations, numerical modeling, and theoretical tools to understand how these systems interact, evolve, and radiate. Alongside that, I spend a lot of time building scientific software to support simulation and analysis workflows in astrophysics.
I was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, and I’ve been drawn to physics for as long as I can remember—though I can’t pinpoint exactly why. Something about the way it tries to make sense of the universe has always stuck with me. That interest eventually led me to the University of Utah, where I earned degrees in Applied Mathematics and Physics (Summa Cum Laude). I completed an honors thesis on using galaxy clusters to test modified theories of gravity, for which I was awarded the Allison Reagan Library Thesis Award. As an undergraduate, I found myself pulled toward interdisciplinary work: I collaborated with Dr. Dan Wik in the university's X-ray astrophysics group, analyzing observational signatures of high-energy processes in galaxy clusters, and also worked as the lead data scientist in the Weller Lab, applying machine learning to biomedical datasets. Those two tracks—cosmology and computation—ended up shaping a lot of how I think about science today.
Outside of my research, I'm very passionate about the outdoors! I'm an avid whitewater rafter and an abysmal (but improving) whitewater kayaker. I also enjoy hiking, backpacking, bouldering, and just about anything else that involves sweating in the mountains! I also spend a great deal of time involved in LGBTQIA+ advocacy and support. Before coming to Berkeley, I worked part-time as the program coordinator at a local LGBTQIA+ youth and young adult center called Encircle—an experience that deeply shaped my life and helped clarify just how important it is to me to have an impact beyond research.
My research focuses on the physics of galaxy clusters—the largest gravitationally bound systems in the universe—as laboratories for both cosmological inference and high-energy astrophysical processes. I’m particularly interested in how the internal dynamics of these systems encode information about dark matter, plasma physics, and structure formation in the universe.
To explore these questions, I use a combination of hydrodynamical simulations, semi-analytic models, and theoretical tools rooted in fluid dynamics, statistical mechanics, and gravitational physics. Much of my work involves analyzing both idealized and cosmological simulations (e.g., IllustrisTNG, Magneticum) to study the evolution of the intracluster medium (ICM)—especially the role of turbulence, shocks, and conduction in shaping X-ray and Sunyaev-Zel’dovich observables. I’m also interested in improving how we connect theory to data, particularly through mock observations and forward modeling that accounts for microphysical processes like viscosity, magnetic field amplification, and non-equilibrium thermodynamics.
