News: Students

In a new paper in Nature Astronomy, Taylor Hoyt –who received his Ph.D from UChicago in 2022 and is currently a researcher in Berkeley Lab’s Physics Division – presents a new approach to calibrating the measurement of the universe’s present day expansion rate.

Mandy Chen was born and raised in Guizhou Province, Southwest China. Before coming to the University of Chicago she was studying at the University of Hong Kong, where she got bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics and astronomy. This is her fifth year as a PhD student in astronomy and astrophysics. Her research focuses on observations of the diffuse circumgalactic medium—the outermost envelopes of galaxies. She says she “seeks to better understand the dynamical state of this diffuse gas, and its connection to the star-formation/supermassive blackhole activities of galaxies and the cosmic baryon cycle in general.”

Edgar Marrufo Villalpando, graduate student, won the 2022 DOE Graduate Instrumentation Research Award (GIRA).

Prof. Abigail Vieregg and her students build instruments to detect the highest energy neutrinos.

Graduate student Abby Lee has been awarded the Future Investigators in NASA Earth and Space Science and Technology (FINESST) grant

Congratulations to Taylor Hoyt for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on “The Tip of the Red Giant Branch and its Application to Measurements of the Hubble Constant”.

Congratulations to Dimitrios Tanoglidis for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on “Shedding light on the Low-Surface-Brightness Universe with Galaxy Surveys and Machine Learning”.

Congratulations to Meng-Xiang Lin for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on “Seeking Solutions for the Hubble Tension”.

Congratulations to Rostom Mbarek for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on “Particle Acceleration, Propagation, and Detection: A Journey from the Kinetic Structure of Plasma Physics to Particle Transport on Cosmic Scales”

Congratulations to Huanqing Chen for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on “Probing Cosmic Reionization with Quasar Proximity Zones” (PhD Advisor: Nick Gnedin)

Congratulations to Kaeli Hughes, graduate student, for winning a 2022 Nathan Sugarman Award for Excellence in Undergraduate and Graduate Student Research.

Zhuowen Zhang has received the Prize for the Best Poster at the Fermilab Users Meeting in August, on DES galaxy cluster research.

Kaeli Hughes,  KICP graduate student, won a  2021 Price Prize in Cosmology and Astrophysics

Congratulations to Qing Yang (Amy) Tang for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on "Development of Kinetic Inductance Detectors for mm and sub-mm Observations".

Congratulations to Nora Shipp for successfully defending her Ph.D. dissertation on "Discovery & Modeling of Milky Way Stellar Streams".