News & Updates

Exciting STRAND talk by Pranav Nagarajan on understanding GAIA's black holes and what they tell us about stellar evolution! [recording]

🎉 HUGE congratulations to GW Paleontology collaborator Aobo Li on receiving an NSF CAREER award! His proposal, "Detecting Extremely Rare Physics Events in the Era of AI for Science," focuses on developing AI agents to automate the search for neutrinos and dark matter, as well as interdisciplinary AI education between physics and data science. [NSF award]

🇺🇸 Received my actual green card today — so excited to officially be able to stay in the United States for at least another 10 years!!

🎉 HUGE congratulations to GW Paleontology friend and UCSD astro major Kenneth Cervantes for being accepted into the MSc Astronomy program at Leiden University — one of the best astronomy MSc programs in the world! And enormous congratulations also to group member and astro major Matthew McCall for being accepted into the prestigious Masters program at USC, where he will start this Fall! So proud of both of them!

Congratulations to GW Paleontology Lab members Sasha Levina and Marko Ristić for being selected for ACME visitor positions — chosen from over 108 applicants, and among only a handful of US-based researchers selected to visit Europe! Sasha is planning to visit UNIGE in Geneva, and Marko is planning to visit INFN. ACME (the Astrophysics Centre for Multi-messenger studies in Europe) is a new research center coordinating European-wide access to leading multi-messenger astrophysics research infrastructures, instruments, data, and expertise.

New gravitational-wave results released from LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA (GWTC-5). LVK announced their detections from the second half of the fourth observing run (O4b), bringing the total catalog to over 390 candidates — including the loudest gravitational-wave signal ever recorded (SNR = 76.9). I made an astrophysics-focused summary of the new catalog and population results. [summary]

Fantastic STRAND talk today by Natsuko Yamaguchi (PhD student, Caltech) on the exciting latest research on White Dwarf–Main Sequence star binaries, how they show up in different binary surveys such as GAIA, and what we might learn from their properties about the lives of stellar binaries and how they interact.

So proud of Sasha Levina for passing her Astronomy PhD candidacy exam at UC San Diego today - with flying colors! 🛸 and a fun spherical cow analogy! 🐮 🐮 Sasha is the first student in our GW Paleontology group to reach this milestone. [full post]

Great SMASH talk today by San Diego Supercomputer Center's expert Mai Nguyen on Cyberinfrastructure for AI-Enabled Science at SDSC 😎 💻

Talking about all the latest development in computing including National Data Platform, NRP, ACCESS and so much more! Happy Computing on Tuesday 🖥️

Congratulations to Matthew McCall for getting accepted into the Astrophysics Master's program at USC, where he will start this Fall!

New paper on arXiv: Massquerade: Impacts of Mass Ratio Reversals on Binary Black Hole Merger Rates and Mass Distributions by Tyler Smith, Floor Broekgaarden, Sasha Levina, Amedeo Romagnolo, Manasvini Komandur, Melanie Santiago, and Kyle Rocha. This is also the first arXiv paper for both Manasvini Komandur and Melanie Santiago — congratulations!

Steffani Grondin's astronomy outreach initiative was highlighted in the local newspaper — bringing a glimpse of the night sky to the Castlegar community. [article]

We are co-organizing the Fast Machine Learning for Science Conference 2026, taking place August 31 – September 4 at UC San Diego! The conference explores emerging ML methods and their applications in scientific discovery, with topics spanning accelerated inference, algorithm design, and applications across physics, genomics, climate science, and more. Abstract submission is now open — standard abstracts due June 1, extended abstracts (4-page papers) due June 15.

Ran 100 miles this weekend at SD100. What an experience! ❤️

When I moved to San Diego two years ago, life felt overwhelming at times — a new job, visa uncertainty, being far away from friends and family, and trying to build a new life from scratch. But somewhere along the way, I completely fell in love with this place — and especially with its people. The running community here has been such an unexpected gift: inspiring, supportive, adventurous, nature-loving humans who genuinely show up for one another.

Running 100 miles was something I genuinely never thought I could do. Especially with ~15,000 feet of elevation gain — which feels pretty absurd for someone who grew up in one of the flattest places imaginable 😅. And doing it while balancing the chaos, stress, failures, and self-doubt that come with a busy academic career often made it feel even more impossible.

This race became a reminder to myself that things that seem impossible sometimes can be done — step by step, mile by mile, with the help of an amazing community around you. So proud. So grateful. So thankful. ❤️

Khushi Karthikeyan's research on black hole seeds in our group was highlighted in Science News Explores, a science magazine for high school students. [article]

Had a blast organizing the Software Citation Workshop at UC San Diego's School of Physical Sciences & San Diego Supercomputer Center, with great contributions and discussions from a broad range of participants and experts. Made possible by the amazing support of a NASA HPOSS grant. ✨ Our improved Software Citation Station is publicly available, and we will soon share more exciting outcomes from the workshop — full of hackathons, discussions, and (of course!) some beach volleyball. 🌟

Congratulations to group alumna Feranmi Falodun, who is starting a new position as a SULI Intern at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, working within the Computing Sciences department!

Proud of PhD student Sasha Levina, who gave a talk on her research at the APS Meeting!

Congratulations to high school student Meera Desawale on winning 1st place in the Physics and Astronomy category at the Science Poster Competition! 🎉

Congratulations to Steffani Grondin on being selected as an AAS Harlow Shapley Lecturer 2026! The Shapley Lectureship is a prestigious AAS program that brings distinguished astronomers to schools and communities across North America to share the wonder of the Universe — a tradition dating back to 1958.

Group member Amedeo Romagnolo launched the Stellar Winds Explorer website, an interactive resource accompanying the Stellar Winds Atlas paper.

Received an honorable mention for the 2026 Better Scientific Software (BSSw) Fellowship Program, recognizing work on advancing software citation practices to make astronomical research more reproducible and transparent.

Huge congrats to PhD student Sasha Levina on her first first-author paper, out on arXiv today! 🎉 Sasha links cosmic star formation histories with stellar evolution models to explore how binary black hole (BBH) merger populations evolve across cosmic time. A key finding: the analytical star formation history fits commonly used in the field don't accurately represent the true underlying star formation rate, often imprinting artificial features in BBH distribution predictions — including an overly strong peak near ~8 M☉. Sasha is now working on making TNG star formation rate models more accessible to the BBH modeling community. All code to reproduce the work is publicly available. [arXiv] 🎉

So proud of high school student Khushi Karthikeyan, who has been recognized as a Regeneron Science Talent Search Scholar 💫! The Regeneron STS is the nation's oldest and most prestigious science and math competition for high school seniors. Khushi worked with Amedeo Romagnolo and Floor Broekgaarden in the GW Paleontology group this summer, studying the formation of intermediate-mass black holes. Her project: The Supermassive Problem: Probing Potential Stellar Formation Pathways of Intermediate-Mass Black Holes. Fingers crossed for the top 40 finalists announcement on January 21! 🤞

The 2nd Annual UCSD SMASH & NSF HDR ML Hackathon concluded — and it was a tremendous success! A special shout-out to student Sonata Simonaitis-Boyd, who did a fantastic job as lead organizer. Many thanks also to Prof. Javier Duarte and Prof. Liang Yang for their huge contributions, and to all the HDSI, A&A, and Physics volunteers. The event was supported by the UCSD Strategic Convene and Influence Award. Teams tackled three scientific ML challenges: beetles as sentinel taxa, forecasting monkey motor neuron behavior, and predicting coastal flooding events.

Gave the IAU G2 Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Lecture as an online invited talk — What Stars Are Made Of: Celebrating 100 Years of Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's Revolutionary PhD Thesis. [video]

Quoted in Scientific American on how AI could transform physics research.

Mentioned in a UC San Diego Today article announcing the 2025 Convene and Influence Awardees, recognizing the SMASH initiative for accelerating cosmic breakthroughs through AI at UC San Diego.

Played in the student vs. faculty volleyball match at UCSD! [reel]

Visited one of the LIGO detectors at the Hanford site in Washington!

New gravitational-wave results released from LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA (GWTC-4). I made an astrophysics-focused summary of the new catalog. [summary]

Fantastic final presentations at the conference for undergraduate summer research by Saina, Manasvini, Laya, and Esther (left to right) from the Gravitational-Wave Paleontology group!

Wrapping up a great summer working with many talented students at UCSD's School of Physical Sciences, including Suoi-Nguon Pham, Esther Park, and Manasvini Komandur.

Summer student highlight: Manasvini Komandur (UCSD STARS Fellow, rising junior in Physics/Astronomy) investigated mass ratio reversals in black hole binary systems with advisors Tyler Smith and Floor Broekgaarden.

Summer student highlight: Feranmi Falodun (CalBridge Fellow, Computer Engineering at Cal State East Bay) analyzed binary black hole merger rates using StarTrack for the GW Paleontology group.

Multiple group members presented their research at UCSD's Summer Research Conference. [schedule]

Esther Park was accepted into the Caltech FUTURE program, offering guidance on graduate school applications, research discussions, and faculty mentorship.

Athira Menon (Columbia University) visited the GW Paleontology group to discuss stellar mergers.

Over 10 group members attended the Fullerton Workshop on Gravitational Waves and Nuclear Physics.

Participated as a panelist at UCSD's STARS Program workshop for summer research interns.

Group picture during the Fullerton r-process enrichment workshop!

Gave an invited talk at the Fullerton State University workshop connecting r-process enrichment and gravitational waves.

Marko Ristić received an honorable mention for the IAU thesis prize and was officially appointed visiting postdoc at UCSD with the Schmidt AI Postdoc Fellowship. [announcement]

Collaborator Lucas de Sá successfully defended his PhD and is relocating to Heidelberg. Congratulations!

Sasha Levina obtained her Master of Arts degree from JHU and received her official UCSD offer letter.

Many student fellowship awards this summer: Laya Binu (UCSD URS), Feranmi Falodun (CalBridge), Alexis Vazquez (CalBridge), Manasvini Komandur (STARS), Suoi-Nguon Pham (STARTastro), Hanan Sayes (KAUST Fellowship), Danielle Smart (CodeAstro), and Ángel Hernández (accepted to UChicago MSc program). Congratulations all!

Ana Lam completed her MSc degree as part of the CUNY MSc Program in New York's second cohort.

Featured in an interview by Lucas Ellerbroek for NRC (Dutch national newspaper): De verloving van twee zwarte gaten kan miljarden jaren duren en het eindigt altijd met een botsing. [NRC] [open version]

Gave a public talk on Black Hole Paleontology at UC San Diego to celebrate the launch of the new Astronomy department. [video]

Joined the UCSD protest to stand up for science in the USA.

Honored that Prof. and Nobel Prize winner Adam Riess visited virtually my ASTR 121 class today at UCSD to have a Q&A with our Explosive Universe students.

Ana Lam gave the STRAND seminar at UCSD on her work on quantifying survival fractions in binary stellar evolution.

My PhD thesis was selected as one of six finalists for the 2023 GWIC-Braccini Gravitational Wave Thesis Prize. [prize info]

Group picture at the AAS Meeting!

Featured in Smithsonian Magazine in an article about gravitational waves from colliding supermassive black holes.

Mentioned in a UC San Diego Today article about the launch of UCSD's new Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics and its six new faculty members.

Participated as a speaker at the Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics (CUWIP).

Ana Lam visited and presented at UCSD.

The SMASH Hackathon for UCSD students took place, organized by the SMASH initiative.

NASA HPOSS proposal funded! Will support improving the Software Citation Station with student assistance.

The first SMASH meeting (UC San Diego Meetings between Astro/physics, SDSC, & HDSI) took place, attended by over 50 scientists.

Started as Assistant Professor at UC San Diego! Looking for motivated students and postdocs to join the GW Paleontology research group starting in 2025.

Tom Wagg and I launched the Software Citation Station — a tool to simplify citing software in academic research. [tool]

Several group milestones: Ana Lam selected for Yale's Python course development workshop; Sasha Levina selected for a Lorentz Center workshop, PhD summer school, and CodeAstro; Adam Boesky started a SpaceX internship; I was selected for Rising Stars in Physics 2024.

Adam Boesky posted two first-author papers investigating binary black hole merger rates relative to star formation rates, submitted to ApJ.

Selected as a Fellow to Realize the Full Potential of LSST. [announcement]

Selected as an Early Science with LSST Scialog Fellow for the fall 2024 conference. [link]

Honored to receive the APS Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin Doctoral Dissertation Award, recognizing excellence in astrophysics dissertations. [announcement]

Organized an Astro-AI workshop for the summer at the Center for Astrophysics, featuring lectures, code demos, and networking. [details]

Published a BAAS article on "ten ways that departments, institutes, and conference organizers in Astronomy can improve support resources." [BAAS] [Astrobites]

Featured in the Colloquy podcast episode "A Cosmic Game of Battleship" discussing massive stars and simulation algorithms. [podcast]

Completed my PhD — and became the first doctor in my family!

Received the Harvard Keto Thesis Prize for the best theoretical astrophysics thesis in Harvard's Astronomy department.

Featured in the Simons Foundation announcement of the 2023 class of Junior Fellows of the Simons Society of Fellows.

Successfully defended my PhD dissertation! [slides]

Delivered a TED-style Harvard Horizons talk about my research. [event]

Harvard CfA published an interview about my PhD research as part of the Horizons 2023 program. [article]

Accepted fellowships as Junior Fellow at the Simons Society of Fellows (Columbia University) and Simons Foundation Research Fellow at the Flatiron Institute's CCA.

Selected as a Harvard Horizons 2023 Scholar. [announcement]

Invited as guest lecturer for the INAF Astronomy PhD School in Scientific Communication. [school]

Closed the semester's Early-Career Astronomers workshop series with a session on "workplace civility resources & support," drawing over 300 attendees.

Awarded a NASA FINESST (Future Investigator) grant of $100,000 to investigate learning about massive stars through gravitational-wave populations.