Research Group

Nathaniel Starkman

Postdoctoral Associate: Joined in 2024

Nathaniel is a computational astrophysicist and astrophysics open source developer. He combines theory and machine learning to study the nature of dark matter through the dynamics of star clusters orbiting galaxies, including our own. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto and a Brinson Prize Fellowship at MIT.

Abdelaziz Hussein

PhD Student Joined in 2022

Addelaziz is studying theoretical and computational astroparticle physics. He works on exploring the nature of dark matter (DM) through galactic dynamics. He is interested in realizing different DM models in simulations and identifying observables that can help us constrain different DM models.

Xiuyuan Zhang

PhD Student Joined in 2022

Xiuyuan is interested in the intersection of particle theory and astrophysics theory. Currently working on subhalo and its velocity distributions and on dark matter models from particle physics aspect.

Xiaowei Ou

PhD Student Joined in 2020

Xiaowei is an observational astronomer. He studies the history of the Milky Way using observational data from large public surveys and high-resolution stellar spectroscopy. His work tackles the Galaxy from multiple angles and compares observation with simulation.

Divij Sharma

PhD Student Joined in 2024

Divij works on theoretical and computational astroparticle physics and cosmology.

High School Students

Michael Huang

High School Student Joined in 2021

Micheal works on identifying stellar substructures in the simulated and real galaxies using graph neural network based clustering algorithms.

Alumni

Tri Nguyen

PhD Student Joined in 2021-2024

After MIT: Tri continues his research on Dark Matter and Galaxy Formation as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics

Zeineb Mezghanni

Undergraduate Joined in 2023-2024

After MIT: Zeineb is currently working on creating N-body simulations of the Gaia Sausage Enceladus (GSE) merger to compare different models of dark matter.