I am interested in studying the formation, evolution, and dynamics of galaxies and the groups and clusters in which they reside. I am especially interested in the role of interactions and mergers on galactic evolution, and understanding groups and clusters of galaxies as evolving, dynamic systems.

My PhD thesis research focused on studying intracluster light (ICL) in galaxy clusters. ICL is composed of stars which have been tidally stripped from their parent galaxies and form a diffuse, low-surface brightness background which permeates the cluster. Because ICL is formed via tidal interactions throughout the hierarchical accretion history of the cluster, it serves as the cluster's "fossil record", preserving the interaction histories of galaxies, and shedding light on the dynamical history of the cluster itself.

I have worked on two major projects which study ICL. First, we have used N-body simulations of the evolution of galaxy clusters in order to study the dynamics which generate the ICL over cosmological timescales. Additionally, I have been heavily involved in the CWRU-based deep imaging survey of the Virgo cluster using the Burrell Schmidt telescope, in order to study the intracluster light in Virgo.

ICL Simulations

Virgo ICL Observations

For the last two years as a Postdoc at ETH Zurich, I have been primarily worked on the Zurich ENvironmental Study (ZENS). The main ZENS data consists of a relatively deep optical survey of 141 galaxy groups in the nearby universe (z~0.05). With the goal of contraining which aspects of a galaxy's environment most affect its evolution, our analyses are focused on simultaneously correlating various galactic structural and stellar population properties with several different measures of the environment. The first three papers in the ZENS series have been submitted and are on the arXive, with several more in the final stages of preparation.

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Last modified: Tue Aug 21 17:04:45 CEST 2012