Suyash Kumar

Welcome! I am a PhD student and Neubauer graduate fellow in Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. My research is advised by Professor Hsiao-Wen Chen, and involves characterizing the kinematics, chemistry, and thermodynamics of the circumgalactic gas around galaxies at z~1. I completed my undergraduate education in Physics from UCLA, and I originally hail from the town of Patna, India.

Please find here my full CV!

Research

Working with Professor Hsiao-Wen Chen at the University of Chicago, I am currently trying to use quasar absorption spectra from the Hubble Space Telescope to constrain the complex, multi-phase circumgalactic gas around galaxies at z~1. I then try to identify hosts for absorbers found along the quasar line of sight using spectroscopic follow-ups of surrounding galaxies using the Very Large and Magellan Telescopes. This multi-pronged approach allows us to constrain the origin of the circumgalactic gas at the redshift range of interest.

Working with Professor Matthew Malkan at UCLA, I examined coronal line emissions in a hundred million SDSS quasars to understand trends of coronal line emission and identified a new addition to the small class of seven known Coronal Line Forest (CLiF) AGNs.

Working with Professor Matthew Malkan, I reduced far-IR IFUs of about 37 galaxies observed by SOFIA. Our findings are publised in The Astrophysical Journal (Spinolgio L., Fernández-Ontiveros J.A., Malkan M.A., Kumar S., et al., February 2022.)

Working with Dr. Lauren Anderson at Carnegie Observatories, I used machine learning, particularly Gaussian Processes to determine the spatial distribution of interstellar dust in the Milky Way.

Working with Dr. Andrew Emerick at Carnegie Observatories, I examined metal mixing in cosmological dwarf galaxy simulations. My findings were presented at the summer student symposium talk and also the 237th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (January 10-15, 2021). My work also contributed to another poster on modeling chemical abundance evolution in dwarf galaxies.

I served as a spacecraft operations lead for the NASA/ NSF funded ELFIN CubeSat mission at UCLA, operating satellites ELFIN-A and ELFIN-B and ensuring timely scientific collections and downlinks. I also analyzed the magnetometer data onboard to detect Field Aligned Currents and EMIC waves in the Earth's Van Allen radiation belts.

Software

Install CLOUDY.

CLOUDY scripts.

Python scripts.

Teaching and Beyond

I currently have two quarters of experience as a teaching assistant in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Chicago. I have had several experiences in informal teaching before, most notably being involved in a departmental club at UCLA meant to train undergraduates for research opportunities in physics. I believe in learning from my students just as much as they would like to learn from me - I am always looking for ways to better reach my audience, and make my discussions a safe, welcoming, and engaging space.

That said, I realize that a variety of backgrounds that students come from can pose significant challenges to their learning. This has historically been an obstacle for the engagement of women and underrepresented minorities in STEM. I am committed to learning more about the different experiences of communities within astronomy and physics as well as STEM in general.

I am also looking to be more involved in outreach opportunities to promote a healthy mindset of thinking about science among children in schools. In the future, I wish to make an impact on the experiences of undergraduates and graduate students within research-based departments.