Funded by the Royal Society, Desika will collaborate with colleagues at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh between 2026-2028 on projects related to the formation of the first galaxies in the Universe. (View from the RoE in Blackford, Edinburgh)

Massimiliano (Max) Parente is an expert in the theory of dust in galaxy formation simulations. Funded by an NASA Astrophysical Theory Grant, Max joined the group in October, 2025, and will work on both dust in semi-analytic models and cosmological hydrodynamic simulations at UF.

Darianette (current group member) with former group members Karolina Garcia and Sidney Lower at the FIR Lines meeting in Minnesota.

Denise will matriculate at the University of Colorado Astronomy graduate program in Fall 2025 to study Solar/Plasma physics. Congratulations Denise!

Jack Moreland will attend Northern Arizona University for a PhD program, anticipating working with Gerard van Belle. Congratulations Jack!

Desika Narayanan visted the Niels Bohr Institute and Cosmic Dawn Centre in Copenhagen to both deliver the Niels Bohr Lecture, as well as contribute to the center’s presentation for the annual DNRF agency visit.

We are extremely grateful to the UF Astraeus Space Institute for funding our work on developing new AI/Simulation Based Inference techniques to understand the physical properties of the first galaxies in the Universe. This award will fund graduate student Dhruv Zimmerman’s research in this area.

Having developed an innovative method for rapidly computing the chemistry and radiative properties of molecular gas in cosmological simulations, Karolina is poised to attack the open problem of line intensity mapping in the early Universe. Newly minted Dr. Garcia is moving to a Center for Astrophysical Surveys postdoctoral fellowship at UIUC to pursue this science!