Hannah Barbian’s scientific training and interest are in molecular virology and pathogen genomics. She received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania with research focused on the fate of viruses upon transmission, immune pressure, and chronic infection. Barbian came to Rush University Medical Center as a postdoctoral researcher in 2018 with research focusing on latent viral infections. She joined the Regional Innovative Public Health Laboratory (RIPHL) at RUSH in 2021 as a genomic epidemiologist, performing genomic surveillance of pathogens of public health importance, including outbreak investigations and monitoring emerging pathogens. As an Assistant Professor, her current research is focused on understanding and surveilling pathogens using molecular and genomic analyses. In particular, she is interested in using environmental air surveillance as a means for pathogen case and genomic surveillance. This Brinson-funded project will explore and optimize the use of air sampling to characterize and monitor antimicrobial resistance. Monitoring antimicrobial resistance is crucial for detecting emerging pathogen threats, guiding clinical treatments, and informing public health actions to protect from untreatable infections.

Mandy Chen’s research focuses on robustly characterizing the dynamics of the circumgalactic medium—the outermost, gaseous envelope of galaxies. This expansive gas reservoir dominates the baryonic mass of a galaxy, and records critical information about a galaxy’s past and ongoing interactions with the surrounding environment. As a Ph.D. student at the University of Chicago, Chen leveraged the recent advent of high-throughput integral field spectrographs and built the first spatially-resolved constraints on galactic outflows and CGM turbulence in distant galaxies. Using several different strong emission lines as tracers, she initiated and led investigations of gaseous halos surrounding galaxies with and without strong black hole accretion. As a Carnegie-Caltech Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Observational Astronomy, Chen harnesses data from ground-based integral field spectrographs on both Keck and Magellan combined with the burgeoning wealth of archival data from JWST/NIRSpec IFU to decode the complexities of turbulent motions in the circumgalactic medium across a wide range of physical scales and cosmic epochs.

Maren Cosens’ work in the Physics Department at the University of California, San Diego has been two-fold, with aspects of both observational astrophysics and the development of new instrumentation. Her observational research has been focused on using some of the largest ground-based telescopes in the world to study the properties of star-forming regions and the interplay between those regions and the galaxies in which they form. Namely, the factors that influence the way in which these regions develop, and the impact of the energy imparted to the galaxy through processes known as “feedback.” In addition to her observational research, she has also worked extensively on the development of new instruments, primarily working on the mechanical design for a next generation imager and an integral field spectrograph, Liger, for the W.M. Keck Observatory which will provide improvements in resolution and field-of-view, over existing instruments. During the term of her Brinson Postdoctoral Fellowship in Astronomical Instrumentation at the Carnegie Observatories, she continues to focus on both these areas of research, working on the development of the Magellan Infrared Multi-Object Spectrograph (MIRMOS), as well as utilizing the vast observational resources at Carnegie to expand her studies of star-forming regions to a broader range of environments.

Soumyaranjan Dash’s research combines observations and theoretical modeling to study how magnetic fields evolve on the Sun and influence the surrounding space environment. By bringing together observations and simulations, his work helps reveal the physical processes that drive the Sun’s dynamic behavior and improves our ability to anticipate space-weather variations in our local space environment. Soumyaranjan earned his Ph.D. from IISER Kolkata, where he focused on predicting large-scale coronal magnetic structures using data-driven models for total solar eclipses. He subsequently worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Now, as a Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Solar Observatory, Soumyaranjan is leveraging cutting-edge observations obtained during the 2024 total solar eclipse with the US NSF Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope (DKIST), alongside coordinated datasets from space-based and ground-based telescopes, to advance our understanding of the Sun’s outer atmosphere. In this role, he aims to investigate how magnetic forces work in the corona that motivates development of robust physics-based theoretical models of solar coronal magnetism.

Maude Gull studies metal-poor massive stars in nearby galaxies. Metal-poor massive stars are at least eight times as heavy as our Sun and have a metallicity (a metal to an astronomer, is any element on the periodic table that is not Hydrogen or Helium) similar to that of the early universe. Across most of the universe, these stars dominate the light of star-forming galaxies and are progenitors to energetic and exotic astrophysical phenomena. Yet our knowledge of the life and death of these stars has been limited due to their rarity in the nearby universe. As a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, Gull conducted the largest quantitative analysis of metal-poor massive stars in the less than 10% solar metallicity regime, laying the groundwork to address this uncertainty and developing the tools for future large-scale studies. As a Carnegie-Caltech Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow, she plans to undertake a much-needed systematic study of metal-poor massive stars and their environments by combining data from HST, JWST, Magellan, and Keck. Gull’s study will focus on constraining the effects of rotation and binarity (presence of a gravitationally-bound companion) on the life and death of metal-poor massive stars. Aiming to provide insights into stellar physics, the study of high-redshift star-forming galaxies discovered by JWST, and pathways leading to transients and exotic remnants.

Ryan Kahn studies how circadian rhythms, the body’s internal 24-hour biological clock, regulate skeletal muscle force production and repair. Specifically, his research focuses on circadian rhythms produced by muscle stem cells (MuSCs). MuSCs are responsible for facilitating muscle repair and adaptation following exercise/rehabilitation sessions and aligning these sessions to specific times of day when MuSCs repair-capacity may be enhanced holds great promise for improving musculoskeletal rehab outcomes. Using preclinical models, Kahn has shown that muscle force production and susceptibility to damage vary by time of day, driven by molecular “clocks” within muscle stem cells. These findings suggest that rehabilitation effectiveness may depend not only on how therapy is delivered, but when it is delivered. As a Brinson Stroke Research Fellow at Shirley Ryan AbilityLab, Kahn is translating these discoveries toward human studies, with the goal of identifying optimal times of day for rehabilitation that could enhance rehab outcomes for stroke patients.

Cheng Mei’s research focuses on earthquake physics, induced seismicity, fault mechanics, and rock friction. His work integrates theoretical analysis, numerical modeling, and laboratory experiments to investigate fault mechanics and hydrothermal effects on both natural earthquakes and induced seismicity associated with engineering activities such as wastewater disposal, enhanced geothermal systems, and carbon storage. Injection-induced seismicity has become a significant concern in areas with active subsurface fluid injection, where wastewater disposal from oil and gas operations has led to a substantial increase in earthquake activity. While much of the attention has centered on the western and central U.S., particularly California and Oklahoma, rising volumes of fluid injection in the northeastern U.S., especially in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia, have raised concerns about growing seismic hazards. The goal of his work as a Lamont Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Geophysics is to examine injection induced seismicity on rough faults, focusing on mainshock forecasting, poroelastic effects, and variability in fault orientations.

Geoffrey Mo studies compact stellar binaries, which produce exotic astrophysical objects, play crucial roles in stellar evolution, and are responsible for many of the most energetic events in the universe. During his Ph.D. at MIT in the LIGO Lab, he enabled multimessenger observations of these sources in both electromagnetic and gravitational waves. As a Carnegie-Caltech Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow, he will work to answer critical questions about the formation and evolution of compact binaries using time-domain observations of gravitational wave sources. In particular, he will use the Hubble Space Telescope in conjunction with ground-based observatories to characterize the compact binary population of globular clusters, which have dense cores which are predicted to be prolific factories of compact binaries. He will also look to improve the capabilities of powerful ground-based telescopes—particularly for studying compact binaries—by developing new multi-band imagers that take advantage of recent advances in image sensor technology to enable low-noise, high-speed characterization of these binary systems.

Sunil Simha’s research uses Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) as probes of matter in the universe. FRBs are flashes of radio light that frequently occur all over the sky daily. Using sensitive radio telescopes, astronomers can detect and pinpoint their locations to distant galaxies from which they originate. Due to their unique millisecond-duration flash, they offer an exciting new window to matter in the universe. Most of the matter, a.k.a. baryons, in the universe is present in a highly diffuse and ionized state, a plasma, which makes them difficult to detect. However, FRBs are dispersed when propagating through this plasma, much like sunlight is dispersed by raindrops to make a rainbow. Measuring this dispersion accurately tells us exactly how much matter the FRB has traveled through, thus directly detecting them. As a NU-UChicago Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Astrophysics, Simha’s research combines the information obtained through FRBs with 3D optical maps of the foreground universe to place novel constraints on plasma distribution around and between galaxies. This technique complements other probes of matter in the universe to give us a much more complete picture of the cycle of baryons between galaxies and their environments.

As a Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow in Experimental Quantum Cosmology, Junwen Xiong works on the development of next-generation dark matter detectors using superconducting quantum sensors to collect and measure the crystal acoustic vibrations (“phonons”) created by a particle interaction. These detectors will enable the search for much lighter dark matter, potentially helping to identify the dark matter and solving this major mystery of the universe.