Theses completed or in progress under supervision or
co-supervision by G. Williger
updated 2022.05.26. Please send corrections to G. Williger
UNIV LOUISVILLE
PhD:
Jeremy Hornbeck, started c. 2010, UL
Analyzing the Environment and Surface Grain Properties of
Circumstellar Disks Using
High Contrast Multiwavelength Imaging
Primary advisor Carol Grady (NASA/GSFC)
Committee: Carol Grady, Michael Sitko (U Cincinnati), James Lauroesch (UL P & A), Lutz Haberzettl (UL P & A), Tim
Dowling (UL P & A)
Publications:
1) Panchromatic Imaging of a Transitional Disk:
The Disk of GM Aur in Optical and FUV Scattered Light
Hornbeck
et al. 2016, ApJ, 829, 65
2) PDS 144: The First Confirmed Herbig Ae-Herbig Ae Wide Binary
Hornbeck
et al. 2012, ApJ, 744, 54
Master's
Karen Collins, April 2010, UL
HD 100453: An Evolutionary
Link Between Protoplanetary Disks and Debris Disks
Primary advisor Carol Grady (NASA/GSFC)
Committee: Carol Grady, Tim
Dowling (UL P&A), John Kielkopf (UL Physics &
Astronomy)
Publication:
HD 100453: A Link Between Gas-Rich Protoplanetary Disks and
Gas-Poor Debris Disks
Collins
et al. 2009, ApJ, 697, 557
Career path: PhD UL (advisor J. Kielkopf, exo-planets), post-doc
at Vanderbilt, post-doc at Harvard (as of 2019)
John Pritchard, 2021-present
The GALEX Extragalactic Spectral Database
Committee: Jim Lauroesch (UL), Joe Ribaudo (Providence), Luciana
Bianchi (JHU)
Bachelor's/Honors
Katie Davis, March 2009
Minimization to Find Ice
Stream Basal Friction Fields Using Control Methods and Inversion
Techniques
Primary advisor Todd Dupont (UC-Irvine, after an REU there)
Committee: Todd Dupont, Benjamin MacCall (UL P & A), Michael
Nantz (UL Chemistry)
Career path: PhD Purdue (biophysics), post-doc Princeton Institute
for Advanced Study, faculty at Emory U (as of 2019)
Jared Keown, March 2014
Infall as a Function of
Position and Molecular Tracer in Dense Cores (+ video file)
Primary advisor Scott Schnee (NRAO-Charlottesville, after an REU
there)
Committee: Scott Schnee, Thomas Riedel (UL Math)
Publication:
Infall/Expansion Velocities in the Low-Mass Dense Cores L492,
L694-2, and L1521F:
Dependence on Position and Molecular Tracer
Keown
et al. 2016, ApJ, 833, 97
Career path: PhD (2019) U. Victoria, BC, Canada, currently in
industry (2019)
Nicholas Duong, March 2017
Shape Modeling and Boulder
Mapping of Asteroid 1992 UY4
Primary advisor Michael Busch (SETI Institute, after an REU there)
Committee: Michael Busch, David Schultz (UL Biology), Thomas
Riedel (UL Math), Joshua Emery (UT Knoxville)
Publication: in preparation
Career path: graduate student at UC-Irvine (2019)
Brianna Mills, August 2018
Automating the Search for
X-ray Flares in the MAXI Lightcurves:
The Search for Dust-Scattering Light Echoes
Primary advisors Sebastian Heinz & Lia Corrales (U Wisconsin,
after an REU there)
Committee: Lia Corrales, James Lauroesch (UL P & A), Dirk
Grupe (Morehead St)
Publication: in preparation
Career path: PhD student at U. Virginia (2019)
Selected Other Master's/Bachelor's Theses at U. Louisville
since my arrival (July 2005)
Master's Theses:
Joseph Burchett, April 2011
Neutral Magnesium
as a Probe of High Column Density QSO Absorbers
Primary advisor James Lauroesch
Career path: graduate school at North Carolina, PhD at
Massachusetts (advisor: Todd Tripp), currently a post-doc at
UC Santa Cruz (2019)
Jennifer Wojno, April 2014
Dust Properties of
z~2 Infrared-Luminous Lyman Break Galaxies
Primary advisor Lutz Haberzettl
Committee: Lutz Haberzettl, Gerard Williger, James Lauroesch
Career path: PhD Astrophysikalisches Inst. Potsdam, Germany
(advisor: Matthias Steinmetz), currently a post-doc at JHU
(2019)
Geoffrey Lentner, July 2015
The Local Cygnus Cold
Cloud and Further Constraints on a Local Hot Bubble
Primary advisor James Lauroesch
Committee: James Lauroesch, Lutz Haberzettl (UL P & A), John
Kielkopf (UL P & A), Ryan Gill (UL Math)
Career path: graduate school at Notre Dame, currently in
industry (2019)
Brian Leist, July 2017
A Photometric Catalog of
Galaxies in the COSMOS Field
Primary advisor Lutz Haberzettl
Committee: Lutz Haberzettl, Gerard Williger, Ryan Gill, Benne
Holwerda
Career path: high school teaching (2019)
Bachelor's Theses:
Blakesley Burkhart, April 2008
Density Studies of MHD
Interstellar Turbulence: Statistical Moments, Correlations and
Bispectrum
Primary advisors Alex Lazarian, Grzegorz Kowal, Diego
Falceta-Goncalves (U Wisconsin, after an REU there)
Local advisor James Lauroesch
Committee: James Lauroesch, Gerard Williger, Lee Gibson (UL
Math)
Publication:
Density Studies of MHD Interstellar Turbulence: Statistical
Moments, Correlations and Bispectrum
Burkhart
et al. 2009, ApJ, 693, 250
Career path: PhD Wisconsin, Einstein Fellow at Harvard (2014),
currently a faculty member at Rutgers (2019)
Shannon Mackenzie, April 2011
The Properties of
Brightest Cluster Galaxies in the SDSS DR6 Adaptive Matched
Filter Cluster Catalogue
Primary advisor Antonio Pipino (ETH Zurich & UCLA, after an
REU at ETH Zurich)
Publication:
Pipino
et al. 2011, MNRAS, 417, 2817
Career path: PhD at Idaho, currently a post-doc at JHU Applied
Physics Lab (2019)
Matthew Nichols, April 2012
Evidence for Modified
Gravity: From Theory to Observations
Primary advisor Robert Nichol (U. Portsmouth, after an REU there)
Local advisor James Lauroesch
Career path: industry, Physics PhD program at UL (2019)
Ryan Sanders, April 2012
A Study of Baryon
Production in Continuum Events at the Babar Detector
Advisor David Brown
Committee: David Brown, Chris Davis (UL), Thomas Riedel (UL Math)
Career path: PhD at UCLA (mentor: Alice Shapley), currently a
post-doc at UC-Davis (2019), Hubble Fellowship (2020)
Brent Mode, April 2018
Efficient quantum
approximation : examining the efficiency of select universal
gate sets in approximating 1-qubit quantum gates
Primary advisor Steven Damelin (U. Michigan, after an REU there)
Local advisor David Brown
Committee: David Brown, Steven Damelin, Eugene Mueller (UL
Chemistry)
Career path: currently a PhD student at Wisconsin (2019)
Samir Kusmic, April 2019
Morphometric analysis and
application in galaxy evolution and high-redshift surveys
Advisor Benne Holwerda
Career path: 2019-20 Fulbright Scholar to Max-Planck-Institut für
Kernphysik, Heidelberg, Germany (mentor: Richard Tuffs), then
graduate school
OTHER UNIVERSITIES
PhD:
Katherine Harris, Dec 2012, Univ. Central
Lancashire (UCLan), England
The Cluster and Large
Scale Environments of Quasars at z<0.9
Primary supervisor Roger Clowes (UCLan)
Co-supervisors Ilona Söchting (Oxford), Gerard Williger (UL),
Anne Sansom (UCLan), Steve Howell (NOAO)
Publications:
A Structure in the early Universe at z~1.3 that Exceeds the
Homogeneity Scale of the R-W Concordance Cosmology
Clowes
et al. 2013, MNRAS, 429, 2910
Evidence of Increased UV Fe II Emission in Quasars in Candidate
Overdense Regions
Harris
et al. 2013, MNRAS, 435, 3125
Career path: short post-doc at U. de Nice (mentor: G. Williger),
post-doc at Virginia Tech (mentor: Duncan Farrah), went into
industry
Gabriel Marinello, Jun 2015, UCLan
Large-scale
Structures of Quasars at Redshifts z=1.2-1.6: Compatibility with
the Concordance Model in Cosmology
Primary supervisor Roger Clowes (UCLan)
Co-supervisors Gerard Williger (UL), Anne Sansom (UCLan)
Publication:
Compatibility of the Large Quasar Groups with the Concordance
Cosmological Model
Marinello
et al. 2016, MNRAS, 461, 2267
Career path: post-doc at U. de Chile, currently a data analysis
for ALMA Observatory, Chile (2019)
Tracey Friday, Jul 2020, UCLan
Working title: Large Scale Structure Correlations with the Cosmic
Microwave Background
Primary supervisor Roger Clowes (UCLan)
Co-supervisors Gerard Williger (UL), Srinivasan Raghunathan (U.
Melbourne/UCLA)
Publication:
Accidental Deep Field Bias in CMB T and SNe z Correlation
Friday
et al. 2018, MNRAS, 479, 1137
Career path: graduated 2020, going to work in industry
Alexia M. Lopez, 2020-present
The Giant Arc and Other Large Scale Structures
Primary supervisor Roger Clowes
(UCLan)
Co-supervisors Gerard Williger (UL), Srinivasan Rathunathan
(UCLA/U. Illinois)
Master's Theses:
Alexia M. Lopez, Nov 2019, UCLan
Assessing the Potential of Intervening MgII Absorbers for
Cosmology
Primary supervisor Roger Clowes (UCLan)
Co-supervisors Gerard Williger (UL), Srinivasan Rathunathan (UCLA)