Graduate Student

Emiko Gardiner

I am a third-year graduate student in the Department of Astronomy, researching gravitational waves from supermassive black hole binaries with Prof. Luke Kelley. My research interests more broadly include the theoretical and computational study of black holes, gravitation, and cosmology. I graduated with a B.S. in Engineering Science and Physics from the University of Virginia (go hoos!) in 2022, where I worked with Jonathan Tan, Jan Staff, and Jon Ramsey on modeling ionization in massive protostellar outflow simulations and with Ilsang Yoon and Bjorn Emonts analyzing X-shaped radio...

Hannah Gulick

Hi! I am an 4th year PhD student and NSF Graduate Fellow in the astronomy department. I am the Deputy Project Scientist for the CuRIOS (CubeSats for Rapid Infrared and Optical Surveys) mission, and the lead for the Student Collaboration Project known as BTO (the Background and Transient Observer) that will fly on the NASA-funded small-explorer satellite called COSI (Compton Spectrometer and Imager) in 2027. My experience includes data analysis (both observation and simulation) of compact objects in the optical and gamma-ray regimes, the design and assembly of space-based instrumentation (...

Maude Gull

Hello there!

I am a fifth-year graduate student in astronomy. I work with Dan Weisz on massive metal-poor stars in the local group.

Post Big Bang, the universe consisted of H, He and a sprinkle of other elements. All other elements (referred to as metals by Astronomers) are subsequently produced by very massive stars (up to hundreds of times more massive than our Sun). Metals can be formed in the high-pressure center of stars, through supernova explosions at the end of their life, or through neutron star mergers. The first generation of stars in the Universe were massive and...

Caleb Harada

Hao-Tse (Howard) Huang

Natalie LeBaron

I am a third year graduate student working with Raffaella Margutti. I graduated from UCSB in 2022 with a B.S. in Physics.

Kenneth Lin

I am a third-year Department of Energy SCGSR graduate student with interests in optical/IR instrumentation, galaxies, transients, and cosmology. I am also especially interested in using statistical techniques to analyze large survey data. I work primarily at LBNL on developing ultra-low noise, photon-counting optical/near-IR CCD detectors with Julien Guy for future spectroscopic surveys (e.g., DESI-II, Spec-S5) and on the La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4) with Peter Nugent. I graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a B.S. in Physics, B.S. in Astrophysics, and a...

Brian Lorenz

I am a first-year graduate student in astronomy and NSF fellow. I hold a B.A. in Physics and Mathematics from Pomona College, and have worked extensively on measuring the redshifts and star formation rates of intermediate mass galaxies with Dan Kelson at Carnegie Observatories. I am broadly interested in the formation and evolution of galaxies from an obserrvational perspective, and I am excited to further pursue research in these topics at Berkeley.

Peter Ma

I am a first-year graduate student with a keen interest in applying Machine Learning to a range of (astro)physical challenges, including instrument design, theory/equation discovery, and observational (anomally) detection pipelines. My current work focuses on neural network-based adaptive optics for the Rubin Observatory and the development of neural compression techniques to optimize data transfer for future space-based telescopes.

I completed my undergraduate degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Toronto. During that time, I developed real-time deep learning...

Sarafina Nance

I am a first-year grad student in astronomy. I'm interested in a variety of topics, largely under the umbrella of theoretical astrophysics.

I was an undergrad at The University of Texas (Hook 'Em!), where I majored in Physics and in Astronomy. There, I worked with J. Craig Wheeler to probe the structure of pre-supernova stars using asteroseismology.

I grew up in Austin, Texas. Besides astronomy, I like tennis, yoga, Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and Game of Thrones.​