Anirudh (Ani) Chiti

Ani Chiti studies how the earliest stars and galaxies evolved in the first billion years of the universe. He performs this research by identifying, mapping and investigating the chemical composition of nearby ancient stars and galaxies, in an approach known as Galactic Archaeology. In his Ph.D. work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chiti developed imaging analyses that led to an order-of-magnitude increase in the efficiency of identifying the most ancient stars. This enabled several pioneering studies, including providing the first direct evidence that the first galaxies formed in massive, extended distributions of an enigmatic substance known as dark matter. As a Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow at KICP, Chiti scaled these analysis techniques for the next generation of digital sky surveys to build an unprecedented view of the ancient Milky Way, in addition to immediate projects that will unveil the interplay between dark matter, the first supernovae and the earliest galaxy mergers in shaping the first galaxies. Chiti was awarded a Brinson Prize Fellowship that will begin in fall 2024.