Geha Research Group

Colin is an NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Astronomy at Yale University. He completed his PhD at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023. Colin is interested in supermassive black hole formation and evolution, the population of intermediate-mass black holes in dwarf galaxies, and AGN accretion.

Erin is a YCAA Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics. She received her PhD in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University in 2022. Erin’s research focuses on extragalactic surveys of low-mass galaxies, where she studies the ways in which dwarf galaxies inform our understanding of physics at both larger and smaller scales. Her work is particularly centered on the relationship between the star formation cycle and the low-mass galaxy population.

Farnik received his Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania, along with a dual Master’s degree in Statistics from the Wharton School. While at Penn, he was a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow (NSF GRFP). Farnik’s research centers on ideas that address the observable effects of both dark energy and dark matter. From the theoretical side, he is interested in Optimal Transport Theory and the fundamental connections this theory has with the physical questions from galactic to cosmological scales. Prior to Penn, Farnik completed my B.Sc. in Physics (minor in Computer Science) at Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran.

Pratik is a galaxy theorist working on physics-rich simulations of low-mass galaxies with the FIRE collaboration. He is interested in Local Group galaxies, studying stellar feedback processes and their influence on galaxy formation, and using the archaeological record of present-day low-mass galaxies to probe conditions in the early Universe, including the physics of the first generation (“popIII”) stars. Pratik received his Ph.D. from UC Davis in Andrew Wetzel’s group. Prior to UC Davis, he grew up in Mumbai, India, and moved to the US for his Bachelor’s degree at Yale.

Juan works on Galactic dynamics. He focuses on writing software to study the internal kinematics of dwarf galaxies. He also works on streams.

Will works on the discovery and characterization of ultra-faint Milky Way satellites, with a major focus on characterizing the kinematics, chemistries, and orbital histories of these systems through spectroscopy. He is also broadly interested in understanding the formation history of the Milky Way stellar halo as a member of the SDSS-V Milky Way Mapper.

Yasmeen works on characterizing satellite galaxies with the SAGA survey.

Camille is a sophomore undergraduate student from College Station, TX majoring in physics & philosophy. She is currently working on characterizing the ultra-faint dwarf galaxy Willman 1 and is curious about the implications of dwarf galaxies on broader cosmological phenomena.