Humanity's search for other worlds

18:00 – Troja, posluchárna T1

Nadia Zakamska received her PhD from Princeton University. Before coming to Johns Hopkins University, she held a NASA Spitzer Fellowship and a John N. Bahcall Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study and a Kavli Fellowship at Stanford University.

Zakamska's most recent work has focused on discovery and characterization of galactic winds powered by supermassive black holes. This long-sought process is now considered the key missing piece in our understanding of galaxy formation, and the removal of gas from galaxies due to black-hole-driven winds likely limited the maximal mass of galaxies in the universe. Using the Gemini telescope, Zakamska's group at Johns Hopkins University found unambiguous signatures of these powerful events in action, and she now uses large telescopes on the ground and in space to detect and characterize these powerful events at the peak epoch of galaxy formation, when black holes made a critical impact on the way galaxies appear today.

Zakamska is also interested in multi-wavelength surveys and data mining (e.g., Sloan Digital Sky Survey) and in teasing out rare objects from large datasets. She maintains active interest in a wide range of topics in astrophysics, both in observations and in theory, including relativistic outflows from black holes and neutron stars and dynamics of planetary and stellar systems. Zakamska is an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow and the recipient of the 2014 Newton Lacy Pierce Prize of the American Astronomical Society.

(https://physics-astronomy.jhu.edu/directory/nadia-zakamska/)