Frontiers of Science

Astronomer Juna Kollmeier gave guest lecture at Frontiers of Science event

On March 22, Juna Kollmeier, the Director at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), was on campus and a guest of the Department of Physics & Astronomy. As part of the College of Science’s Frontiers of Science lecture series, Dr. Kollmeier presented on “Mapping the Cosmos,” concerning the current efforts of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) in mapping over six million objects, from stars, to black holes, to galaxies.

In addition to her appointment at CITA, Professor Kollmeier served as the Founding Director of the Carnegie Theoretical Astrophysics Center at The Observatories of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Pasadena, California. An observationally oriented theorist in astrophysics, Director of the Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS-V), and a scientist committed to public outreach, Kollmeier studies how structures grow and evolve in the universe, focusing on supermassive black holes, the Milky Way, and the intergalactic medium.

She holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics with honors from the California Institute of Technology, as well as a Master of Science and Ph.D. in astronomy, both from Ohio State University, where, in addition to her thesis work, she designed, built, and deployed instrumentation parts for two telescopes as part of the Ohio State Astronomy Instrumentation Lab team.

She was named a Fulbright Scholar, was an Institute for Advanced Study Visiting Professor in 2015- 16, and received Hubble and Carnegie-Princeton Fellowships. She is a CIFAR Fellow and, most recently, has been selected the 2022 International Solvay Chair in Physics.