Graduate student Kirsten Hall, who is working on her PhD with Professors Toby Marriage and Nadia Zakamska, has been named one of the “22 early-career scientists who comprise the third cohort of Schmidt Science Fellows, a program of Schmidt Futures, in partnership with the Rhodes Trust. The new Fellows aim to harness interdisciplinary approaches to tackle long-term societal challenges, including infectious disease, climate change, and biodiversity loss.”

Kirsten is an astrophysicist interested in the evolution of galaxies over all of cosmic time. She has combined state-of-the-art datasets with advanced theoretical modeling to uncover the relationship between star-forming galaxies and dark matter and to measure the impact of growing supermassive black holes on their host galaxies. As a Schmidt Science Fellow, Kirsten now aims to move into climate science to use her expertise with large datasets to convert raw data from atmospheric monitoring satellites and ground-based data into actionable information. By being able to trace emissions back to their sources, she hopes to improve vitally important climate models.