Graduate student Michael Calzadilla awarded 2024 NASA Hubble Fellowship

Michael Calzadilla grew up in Tampa, Florida. As a first-generation college student, he earned his bachelor’s degree in physics from the University of South Florida in 2015. He subsequently crossed the pond to complete a master’s degree in astronomy as a Gates Cambridge scholar under the guidance of Professor Andrew Fabian at the University of Cambridge. Michael will complete his doctorate in physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in May 2024 with his advisor Professor Michael McDonald.

Michael’s work focuses on multiwavelength observations of galaxy clusters to study the baryon cycle that drives the evolution of all galaxies. The largest galaxies residing in these clusters grow via material cooling from their hot atmospheres, which is balanced by feedback from star formation and active galactic nuclei. As part of the South Pole Telescope collaboration, Michael’s work is among the first to leverage recent Sunyaev-Zeldovich-based detections of galaxy clusters to observe this cycling of material out to unprecedented redshifts.

As a Hubble Fellow, Michael will develop machine learning techniques for characterizing the thousands of galaxy clusters being discovered by next-generation cosmological surveys resulting in clean, unbiased samples of the earliest galaxy clusters. Using synergies with large X-ray, optical, and radio datasets, he will seek to answer when galaxy clusters first dynamically relaxed, and how the effectiveness of supermassive black hole feedback has changed over time. He will also use new observatories for more targeted follow-up to investigate the role of feedback-induced turbulence in regulating galaxy growth.

See NASA press release: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/hubble/nasa-awards-astrophysics-postdoctoral-fellowships-for-2024/
See also  https://www.stsci.edu/stsci-research/fellowships/nasa-hubble-fellowship-program/2024-nhfp-fellows)