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MIT Kavli Institute
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Mark Hartman, CAI Principal Instructor
As someone with a background in science and experience in education, my professional goal is to help link the education world with captivating research from the scientific community as a way to motivate interest in science and technology as a career and in every day life. Email: mhartman at space dot mit dot edu Phone: 617 258 8258 Irene Porro, Ph.D., CAI Director
Irene is the Education and Public Outreach scientist at the MIT Kavli Institute (MKI). In her work, Irene is able to combine a background in physics and astrophysics, with an interdisciplinary approach to science learning and a strong commitment to promote science learning outside of the traditional classroom. Email: iporro at space dot mit dot edu Phone: 617 258 7481 Fred Baganoff, Ph.D., CAI Principal Investigator, MKI Research Scientist
I am the principal investigator for an approved Chandra X-ray Observatory proposal to study X-ray emission from Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Using Chandra over the past five years, my collaborators and I have detected the first strong evidence of X-ray emission from the supermassive black hole and discovered rapid X-ray flaring from the source. These data provide compelling evidence for the idea of accretion onto a supermassive black hole. I've also enjoyed presenting public lectures on my work during several MIT EPO programs for teachers, high school students, and the general public. Mike Nowak, Ph.D., MKI Research Scientist
As an undergraduate, I went to MIT and majored in physics. While there, I did research studying the "solar wind", which is the hot plasma persistently being blown off from the outer layers of our sun. My senior year I decided to apply to graduate school in astrophysics. On a snowy January day, when the temperature outside had dropped to -20 F, I got my acceptance letter from Stanford University in sunny Northern California, and my decision was made! There I went from studying the closest, most readily observable star - our own Sun - to basically studying unseen, invisible objects - black holes. My research now focuses on trying to understand these objects, as well as neutron stars, by studying their interaction with matter falling into them (in the case of black holes) or onto them (in the case of neutron stars). In some cases, this also means studying the material that somehow "misses" falling onto these massive objects, and instead comes out in the form of hot, powerful jets of material. Albert Kong, Ph.D., MKI Postdoctoral Associate
Coming Soon... Paola Testa, Ph.D., MKI Postdoctoral Associate
Coming Soon... Andy Young, Ph.D., MKI Research Associate
I have always been interested in science and in figuring out how things work. I obtained my undergraduate degree from the "other" Cambridge (in England) in mathematics, and during that time I became fascinated by astronomy, which I decided to study further. My Ph.D. work at the Institute of Astronomy, also in Cambridge, related to how gas falls into black holes. While the black holes themselves cannot be seen (they are, after all, called black holes because not even light can escape their strong gravity), the infalling gas can be studied. Surprisingly, gas falling into a black hole can become extremely hot and bright, and the emission from this gas can be used to study the environment immediately around the black hole. I then moved to the University of Maryland followed by MIT, and at both institutions expanded my research interests to include the effects that black holes have on their surroundings (e.g. jets and hot spots), and clusters of galaxies. My research makes extensive use of NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory that allows us to take the sharpest pictures of the X-ray sky.
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