I am a Waldo W. Neikirk Associate Professor of Astronomy at the University of Florida's Department of Astronomy.
I research massive star and cluster formation, astrochemistry, the IMF,
turbulence, and the Central Molecular Zone.
I am supported by
These grants support the data processing and analysis of two ALMA large programs,
ALMA-IMF and
ACES,
that each require about 250 TB of storage on the
University of Florida's HiPerGator high performance computing system.
My group has led the data processing efforts on both programs.
I am a member of the
James Webb Space Telescope Users Committee (JSTUC),
so please contact me if you have constructive feedback to offer the JWST
scientific management.
In Fall 2025, I am on sabbatical!
News highlights:
- [9/25] My student Nazar Budaiev submitted a first results paper on Sgr B2, featured in a press release from STSCI
- [9/25] My student Taehwa Yoo has published ALMA observations at high resolution of core-to-YSO fragmentation in W51
- [9/25] I have posted some movies and other visualizations
- [8/25] Our team found streamers feeding a disk(like) system around a massive young star [news]
- [7/25] My postbac student Aden Dawson published new, deeper GTC images of W51
- [7/25] My postdoc Theo Richardson published the framework linking star formation to radiative transfer models
- [7/25] The 'midpoint cloud' is a newly-mapped cloud falling into the Galactic Center
- [6/25] My student Nazar Budaiev mapped water masers in Sgr B2
- [5/25] The 3D CMZ papers received some press coverage
- [4/25] I received a University of Florida Research Foundation Fellowship
- [4/25] JWST observations of Sgr C have been published [STSCI press release]
- [3/25] Theo Richardson has successfully defended his PhD!
- [3/25] Desmond Jeff has successfully defended his PhD!
- [3/25] There are "space tornadoes" in the Galactic Center
- [3/25] Our team mapped a new cloud along the Galactic dust lanes called the midpoint cloud, covered by phys.org
- [4/24] We discovered a Millimeter Ultra-Broad Line Object (MUBLO)! We don't know what it is yet (we're "flummoxed"). Stay tuned! Coverage in: [metro][msn][popular mechanics][daily mail] ["See The Pattern" YouTube channel]
- [4/24] My group has two successful JWST Cycle 3 programs, one led by Nazar Budaiev to map Sgr B2 and one led by Taehwa Yoo to measure the (pre)IMF in W51. These are both critical targets for JWST!
- [1/24] My student Theo Richardson has updated a grid of YSO models (the Robitaille grid)
- [1/24] My student Desmond Jeff found ten new Hot Cores (high-mass protostars) in Sgr B2 DS
- [3/24] We have a press release on JWST observations of The Brick with an associated WorldWide Telescope CosmicDS MiniStory. It was picked up by CNN and Inverse
- [9/23] My student Savannah Gramze found evidence of colliding gas flows along the Galactic bar
- [9/23] My student Nazar Budaiev found hundreds of YSOs in Sgr B2
- [8/23] Our article on CO gas and ice in The Brick has received some press coverage including a podcast episode on Universe Today. Check out our before/after star removal slider.
- [8/23] My student Alyssa Bulatek identified a methanol line as a dasar in G0.253+0.016, aka "The Brick"
- [5/23] I've made some data visualizations zooming in to the
ACES [WARNING: LARGE!]
and ALMA-IMF data sets.
Use keyboard arrows or swipe to flick between slides.
- [4/23] I'm featured in two Explore videos by the UF museum
- [11/22] We found salt (NaCl and KCl) around
the
15 solar mass Orion Source I (and eight others) and
CS masers around
W51e2e, which have been partly explained and may trace the disk
around the most massive YSOs accreting today,
which is kept small by
'chaotic', asymmetric inflow.
- [6/22]
ALMA-IMF
has published its first data release
and
initial results
.
- [12/21] The ALMA development study
"Linking CASA to the astropy ecosystem"
has resulted in many improvements to the radio-astro-tools suite,
especially spectral-cube.
Check out our tutorials.
- [8/21] In Spring through Summer 2021, I co-hosted a talk series
on Star Formation in the CMZ.
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