Astronomy Community Engagement

Laura is a 4th-year graduate student in the Astronomy Department. She works with Alberto Bolatto on identifying high redshift galaxies in PHIBSS CO data. She completed her BSc in Physics and her MSc in Astronomy at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada. In Canada, she worked on determining the star formation rates in a sample of compact groups of galaxies. Outside of school, she enjoys dance, rock climbing, traveling, and learning new languages.

Teal (They/Them/Their) is a current second year graduate student working on atmospheric modelling. More specifically, they are interested in photochemistry, global climate modelling, and open-source code development. They are advised by Dr. Eliza Kempton of the UMD astronomy department and Dr. Giada Arney at NASA GSFC. In addition to being one of ACE's co-founders and current leads, they are the head of Classroom Outreach in the Department. They are from the Riverside, California area, and attended UC Santa Cruz for undergrad. They enjoy crochet, knitting, tabletop games (GM'ing for over a decade now!), video games, art, and Vegan baking.

Ramsey Karim is a third year graduate student, working with adviser Prof. Lee Mundy. Originally from Sacramento, CA, Ramsey completed his Bachelor's degree in Physics and Astrophysics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research interests include radio/IR observation and analysis as well as astronomical applications of computer science. He did his Master's work with Prof. Mundy on constraining hydrogen mass present in star-forming molecular clouds. Now a PhD student, he currently works with Xander Tielens, Marc Pound, and Mark Wolfire on obtaining kinematic and energetic information from SOFIA [CII] observations of PDRs. He really digs baking bread, taking UMD's Zumba classes with other grads, and darkroom photography in the studio at the Student Union. You can find him in his office, ATL 1239, or online at www.ramseykarim.com.

Sara is a 5th-year graduate student in the Astronomy department and is the former Astronomy graduate student president. She works with Suvi Gezari on time domain studies of extremely variable AGN with the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) combined with optical and X-ray spectroscopy. Her Master's thesis with Chris Reynolds (Cambridge) and Erin Kara (UMD) focused on X-ray reverberation mapping and spectroscopy of a rapidly-varying AGN utilizing the X-ray Multi-Mirror Mission (XMM-Newton) and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR). She completed a degree in Physics & Astronomy at the University of Rochester in Rochester, NY, far from her hometown in Scottsbluff, NE. As an undergrad, she participated in an REU program jointly at Hope College in Michigan and NASA Goddard (working on simulations of galactic pulsar populations), and the LIGO SURF program at Caltech (determining the effects of precessing black hole spin on gravitational waves). In her free time, she enjoys rock climbing, hiking, writing, watching movies, and baking.