Alyson Brooks is an American theoretical astrophysicist and professor at

Rutgers University Rutgers University ( ), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of three campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's C ...

. She uses large-scale simulations to determine how galaxies form.

Early life and education

Brooks grew up in

Minnesota Minnesota ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Upper Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by the Canadian provinces of Manitoba and Ontario to the north and east and by the U.S. states of Wisconsin to the east, Iowa to the so ...

. She was interested in

astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...

from a young age, and asked for a telescope as a Christmas gift when she was eight. However, she was discouraged from pursuing a career in science in her teens because of the perception that research would be isolating and unwelcoming to women. She started her undergraduate degree in English in 1996 at

Macalester College Macalester College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1874, Macalester is exclusively an undergraduate institution with an enrollment of 2,142 students in the fall of 2023. The college ha ...

. After doing well in an astronomy elective course, she was invited to join a research project and later changed her major to physics upon discovering the collaborative nature of astronomical research. She wrote an honours thesis called ''Boron in the small magellanic cloud: a novel test of light element formation''. From 2002 to 2008, Brooks was a graduate student at the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW and informally U-Dub or U Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington, United States. Founded in 1861, the University of Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast of the Uni ...

. She completed a master's degree in 2004, then a PhD in 2008. She was supervised by Fabio Governato. Her thesis was ''The role of gas in the evolution of disk galaxies''.

Career

Brooks completed postdoctoral fellowships at

Caltech The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech) is a private university, private research university in Pasadena, California, United States. The university is responsible for many modern scientific advancements and is among a small g ...

from 2008 to 2011 and then at the

University of Wisconsin, Madison A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". Univ ...

from 2011 to 2013. In 2013, Brooks became an assistant professor in physics at

. She specialises in large-scale simulations of

galaxy formation In cosmology, the study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a Homogeneity and heterogeneity, heterogeneous universe from a Big Bang, homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way ga ...

starting approximately one million years after the

Big Bang The Big Bang is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models based on the Big Bang concept explain a broad range of phenomena, including th ...

. These simulations can take up to months to run and require

supercomputer A supercomputer is a type of computer with a high level of performance as compared to a general-purpose computer. The performance of a supercomputer is commonly measured in floating-point operations per second (FLOPS) instead of million instruc ...

s. Her results suggest that

star A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by Self-gravitation, self-gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night sk ...

s and

supernova A supernova (: supernovae or supernovas) is a powerful and luminous explosion of a star. A supernova occurs during the last stellar evolution, evolutionary stages of a massive star, or when a white dwarf is triggered into runaway nuclear fusion ...

e displace

dark matter In astronomy, dark matter is an invisible and hypothetical form of matter that does not interact with light or other electromagnetic radiation. Dark matter is implied by gravity, gravitational effects that cannot be explained by general relat ...

, reorganising the universe in a manner consistent with experimental observations which cannot directly detect dark matter. Brooks collaborates with high energy particle physicists who are interested in applying her findings to help tune dark matter astrophysical models. Her simulations use higher spatial resolution than previous efforts, allowing her to include dynamics of

dwarf galaxies A dwarf galaxy is a small galaxy composed of about 1000 up to several billion stars, as compared to the Milky Way's 200–400 billion stars. The Large Magellanic Cloud, which closely orbits the Milky Way and contains over 30 billion stars, is so ...

in addition to large structures. Dwarf galaxies are thought to contain a large proportion of dark matter, making them useful candidates for studying the evolution of the dark matter distribution including its disappearance. Brooks found that dark matter self-interactions, previously thought to be a way to indirectly observe dark matter in dwarf galaxies, may not be a significant factor after all after the Fermi Large Area Telescope delivered no positive results for a gamma ray

– The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen ...

dark matter annihilation theory. One of her main contributions to state-of-the-art lambda-cold-dark-matter simulations is including

baryonic matter In particle physics, a baryon is a type of composite subatomic particle that contains an odd number of valence quarks, conventionally three. Protons and neutrons are examples of baryons; because baryons are composed of quarks, they belong to ...

despite its relatively smaller mass than dark matter. Brooks will use the

James Webb Space Telescope The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. As the largest telescope in space, it is equipped with high-resolution and high-sensitivity instruments, allowing it to view objects too old, Lis ...

to image stars and dwarf galaxies in detail in the infrared, including the

Messier 92 Messier 92 (also known as M92, M 92, or NGC 6341) is a globular cluster of stars in the northern constellation of Hercules. Discovery It was discovered by Johann Elert Bode on December 27, 1777, then published in the ''Berliner Astronomisches J ...

(M92) star cluster, dwarf galaxy Draco II, and the Wolf–Lundmark–Melotte (WLM) galaxy. The objective is to study how these structures formed and to track their motion. She was an organiser of the 2019 "Inclusive Astronomy" meeting. Starting in 2014, she was a member of the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

's Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy. Brooks is involved in mentorship activities for undergraduate students, particularly women and minorities in science.

Awards and honours

* 2020 Leadership Resource Allocation Awardee to use Frontera supercomputer for project "Simulated Inside and Out: the Milky Way Galaxy at Unprecedented Resolution". *2019 Maria Goeppert Mayer Award for ''contributions to theoretical astrophysics, in particular, the use of numerical hydrodynamic simulations compared with observations to elucidate the essential physics of galaxy formation''. *2019 Rutgers Board of Trustees Research Fellowship for Scholarly Excellence. *2019 Rutgers Presidential Fellowship for Teaching Excellence. *2017 Rutgers School of Arts & Sciences Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education. *2016 Outstanding Teaching Award from the Rutgers Society of Physics Students. * 2015

Sloan Research Fellowship The Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded annually by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation since 1955 to "provide support and recognition to early-career scientists and scholars". This program is one of the oldest of its kind in the United States. ...

References

External links

Publication list
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Brooks, Alyson American women physicists Living people Sloan Research Fellows American astrophysicists University of Washington alumni Macalester College alumni Rutgers University faculty Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women