Northwestern University is in the midst of an astrophysics faculty expansion plan. With last year’s arrival of Raffaella Margutti, an expert in ‘transient phenomena’ such as supernovae and gamma ray bursts, Northwestern became one of the very few universities in the nation with both a LIGO research group and a transient astronomy team.
This fall, we are excited to announce two new astrophysics faculty additions at CIERA: Wen-fai Fong and Sasha Tchekhovskoy. Wen-fai’s research focuses on mergers of compact objects and their environments; she chases the elusive electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational-wave sources. She will be a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow for her first year at Northwestern, before moving into her faculty role.
A former NASA Einstein Fellow, Sasha will start as an assistant professor this fall. His interests include high-energy astrophysics processes powered by compact objects, black holes, and neutron stars which he simulates using high-performance computing.
Welcome, Wen-fai and Sasha!