Research
Astronomy is a detective story told in light. Different telescopes catch different clues. My work focuses on galaxies that are distant, dusty, or both — the ones that can slip through a survey if we look in only one wavelength.
The stars hidden by dust
A young star emits light, but dust around it can absorb much of that light and radiate the energy again at longer wavelengths. I combine JWST images with ALMA observations to study galaxies whose star formation would otherwise be undercounted. In the PRIMER COSMOS field, this approach identified counterparts for nearly all known millimetre sources in the sample and traced dust-obscured star formation back to roughly redshift 7.
When black holes and stars grow together
A quasar is a brilliant sign of material falling toward a supermassive black hole. Some quasars also sit in galaxies undergoing intense star formation. How can both processes flourish at once? I use cold gas and dust measurements to investigate these unusual systems, while checking whether apparent brightness is being exaggerated by lensing or blended neighbours.
The nearby impostors in deep space images
An extremely cold brown dwarf in our Milky Way can masquerade as a galaxy from the earliest Universe in a single image. A second observation offers a clue: nearby objects shift slightly across the sky over time, while a distant galaxy hardly moves. I use that motion, and the object’s light across different filters, to distinguish these cosmic lookalikes.
Better tools for faint signals
The faintest galaxies rarely announce themselves clearly. I work with large multi-wavelength datasets and am developing methods to combine weak measurements, especially in ALMA data. I also lead observing proposals and enjoy turning a promising scientific question into a workable telescope plan.
Observatories and collaborations
My research uses facilities from the infrared to radio, including JWST, ALMA, NOEMA, and the VLA. My CV records the relevant observing programs and roles; the publications page links to completed results. The most exciting moment is often when two instruments disagree — that is where a better question begins.