Events

Understanding how stars form is a vital aspect of many areas of astronomy. From one perspective, star formation is a crucial part of understanding how galaxies evolve – from another, star formation can help us determine where planets exist that have the potential to host life. In this month’s KPL astronomy talk, Dr. Ashley Bemis will discuss what we learn about star formation by looking at where stars are being born in nearby galaxies – and within our own Milky Way.

Jennifer Chan is a postdoctoral fellow at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) and the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, supported by joint CITA and University of Toronto Faculty of Arts & Science fellowships. She earned her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Astrophysics from University College London, and a Bachelor's in Physics from the University of Oxford. Her research focuses on investigating the origins, evolution, and properties of large-scale magnetic fields in the Universe, essential for understanding their impact on cosmic structures.

Ralph Pudritz is a theoretical astrophysicist at McMaster University, whose research focuses on star and planet formation, and origins of life. Ralph is the founding (2004-2015) Director of McMaster's Origins Institute (OI).

Matías Bravo is a Herschel Fellow at McMaster University. His research explores the formation and evolution of galaxies at a population level through a combination of state-of-the-art semi-analytic models and large-scale spectroscopic galaxy surveys, with a special focus on the physical mechanisms regulating star formation at a galaxy scale like environmental processes and AGN feedback. .

Hailing from Algeria, I have a background in High Energy Physics,  in which I hold Master's from Sorbonne University in Paris. I spent four years at the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics where I did my PhD, 
working with James Taylor, on trying to leverage Galaxy Cluster structural properties for Cosmology. I am now an Analyst in Economics and Investment Research at the Alberta Investment Management Corporation 
(AIMCo).

In the past few years, we have seen for the first time an image of the “event horizon” around a supermassive black hole – the mysterious and powerful object lying at the heart of a nearby galaxy. In this month’s KPL astronomy talk, Dr. Avery Broderick will talk about what we can learn about fundamental physics from these images, and how we go from a fuzzy image to sharp conclusions about the nature of gravity.

Sit back, relax, and learn about the Universe, while also having a couple of drinks and a bit of fun. This month we will learn about worm holes and black holes with María Rosa Preciado Rivas and Conner Dailey! 

Hannah Dykaar is currently a PhD student at the Dunlap Institute and the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, where she works with Professors Maria Drout and Bryan Gaensler. Her research focuses on tidal disruption events (TDEs), which occur when stars get sufficiently close to supermassive black holes and are torn apart.

Naadiyah Jagga is a Ph.D. candidate in Astronomy at York University. She did her undergraduate and master's degrees at Leiden Observatory. She is interested in the evolution of galaxies, with focus on the stellar mass of galaxies. Her research, under supervision of Dr. Adam Muzzin, involves creating and analysing spatially resolved maps of galaxies observed by JWST.  She is a member of the Canadian NIRISS Unbiased Cluster Survey (CANUCS) program, the JWST Ultradeep Nirspec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization (UNCOVER) program and co-PI of the JWST Ultimate Medium-band Photometric Survey (JUMPS) program.

Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting other stars, opening a new chapter in our understanding of the Universe and our place in it. In this month’s KPL astronomy talk, Dr. Michael Balogh will discuss how scientists find and study these distant worlds, and how upcoming technology will help us search for life beyond our solar system.