Yeshe Fenner
ITC Fellow at Harvard University
|
I am a postdoctoral fellow with the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA). My research interests include the chemical evolution of astrophysical systems ranging from globular clusters of stars with peculiar abundance patterns, to spiral galaxies including our own Milky Way, dwarf galaxies, and quasar absorption systems such as high-redshift proto-galaxies known as damped Lyman-alpha absorbers (DLAs). I am also interested in how these seemingly distinct objects might be connected to each other and to the intergalactic medium.
I have developed a galaxy evolution code, Galaxy Evolution tool (GEtool), which predicts the way observable properties of disk galaxies change with time, depending on the galaxy's environment and initial conditions. By simulating the chemical properties of gas and stars under different conditions, one can study the nature of high velocity clouds, dwarf, spiral and low surface brightness galaxies, and gain insight into the types of objects that give rise to the eclectic family of quasar absorbers.