astro.wikisort.org - Researcher

Blakesley Burkhart is an astrophysicist. She is the winner of the 2019 Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy, which recognizes achievement by a woman post-doctoral researcher in astronomy or a related field. The award cited her work on magnetohydrodynamic turbulence, and for developing innovative techniques for comparing observable astronomical phenomena with theoretical models.[1]

Blakesley Burkhart
Alma mater	University of Wisconsin–Madison
Known for	research on magnetohydrodynamics
Scientific career
Fields	Astrophysics
Thesis	New frontiers for diagnosing the turbulent nature of the multiphase magnetized interstellar medium (2014)
Doctoral advisor	Alex Lazarian
Website	www.mhdturbulence.com

Career

Burkhart completed her Ph.D. in Astronomy at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 2014. Her dissertation explores "connections between theoretical, numerical, and observational understanding of [magnetohydrodynamic turbulence] as it applies to the neutral, ionized, and molecular interstellar medium."[2] She was a post-doctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian. There she worked with Mark R. Krumholz and others to develop a unified model of disc galaxies, working to explain why disc galaxies have a lower rate of star formation than is predicted by other models.[3][4] She also worked on the KickSat-2 femotosatellite project with Zac Manchester.[5] In August 2018, she became an associate research scientist at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics. She has been working as an assistant professor at Rutgers University in the department of Physics and Astronomy since September 2019.[6]

She was the host of the 5 Minute Astronomy podcast from 89.9FM WORT in Madison.[7]

Selected publications

• Burkhart, Blakesley; Falceta-Gonçalves, D.; Kowal, G.; Lazarian, A. (2009-03-01). "Density Studies of MHD Interstellar Turbulence: Statistical Moments, Correlations and Bispectrum". The Astrophysical Journal. 693 (1): 250–266. arXiv:0811.0822. Bibcode:2009ApJ...693..250B. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/693/1/250. ISSN 0004-637X. S2CID 15997930.
• Gaensler, B. M.; Haverkorn, M.; Burkhart, B.; Newton–McGee, K. J.; Ekers, R. D.; Lazarian, A.; McClure–Griffiths, N. M.; Robishaw, T.; Dickey, J. M. (2011-10-05). "Low-Mach-number turbulence in interstellar gas revealed by radio polarization gradients". Nature. 478 (7368): 214–217. arXiv:1110.2896. Bibcode:2011Natur.478..214G. doi:10.1038/nature10446. hdl:2066/92017. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 21976022. S2CID 1472898.
• Burkhart, Blakesley; Stanimirović, Snežana; Lazarian, A.; Kowal, Grzegorz (2010-01-10). "Characterizing Magnetohydrodynamic Turbulence in the Small Magellanic Cloud". The Astrophysical Journal. 708 (2): 1204–1220. arXiv:0911.3652. Bibcode:2010ApJ...708.1204B. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/708/2/1204. ISSN 0004-637X.

Selected lecture videos

• "The Photon Underproduction Crisis Solved: The Effect of AGN Feedback on the Low Redshift Lyman-alpha Forest", Institute for Theory and Computation, February 8, 2018
• Dr. Burkhart lecturing on “Galaxies as Star-Forming Engines: Simulating the Turbulent Birth of Stars”, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard, October 14, 2016[8]

Awards received

• Jansky Award, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Department of Astronomy, 2011[9]
• NASA's Wisconsin Space Grant Fellowship, 2013-14[10]
• Robert J. Trumpler Award, 2017[11]
• Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy, 2019[1]
• Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, 2020[12]
• Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, 2021[13]
• Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award, 2022[14]

References

External links

• Official website
• Feature article in Rutgers University student newspaper
• Profile from University of Wisconsin Department of Astronomy
• Blakesley Burkhart publications indexed by Google Scholar

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