Alexa Gordon

Alexa Gordon’s research uses the host galaxy environments of fast radio bursts (FRBs) as a lens to understand their origins and formation channels. Despite thousands of detections since their discovery nearly two decades ago, fundamental questions remain on what produces FRBs, how they form, and what powers them. Gordon uses telescopes all across (and above) the globe to follow-up new FRBs and pinpoint them back to their host environments. While FRBs associated to their hosts are currently rare, FRB detectors will soon increase rates from a few hosts per month to several per day. As a Brinson Prize Fellow at Caltech, Gordon will use the coming windfall of FRBs to perform multi-scale analyses from the immediate FRB burst-site to their global host galaxy properties to paint a holistic picture of how FRBs form and are influenced by their environment. This work will shed new light on the formation channels of FRBs and their evolution across cosmic time, ultimately informing their applicability as tools to understand the Universe.