Research

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is NASA's next generation flagship space telescope and is the successor of the Hubble Space telesocpe (HST). JWST will have a 6.5m deployable primary mirror which is almost three times larger than HST's primary mirror. This powerful telescope will observe primarily in near infra-red wavelength range and will have both imagers and spectrographs and will be an incredible tool to study of distant galaxies, including those seen at z > 10 when the first generations of stars lit up a dark Universe, and for cool objects such as forming stars and planetary systems. JWST was launched on December 25, 2021 . The image is an artist's impression of the JWST deployed at the L2 point 1.5 million km from Earth [Credit NASA].

I am a lead member of the EIGER project (Emission-line galaxies and Intergalactic Gas in the Epoch of Reionization). A large JWST GTO program that explores the evolution of intergalactic gas and galaxies in the Epoch of Reionization. This is an international (ETH Zurich, NC State, MIT, Nagoya University) collaboration, that will study 116 hours of JWST/NIRCAM grism spectroscopy campaings in several key fields which contains high redshift quasars. These JWST observations will yield an unprecedented 1000+ spectroscopically confirmed high-z galaxies. Since last several years, we have been conducting multi-wavelength imaging and spectroscopy campaigns using both ground (Magellan FIRE/IMACS, Keck/KCWI/MOSFIRE/HIRES, HST/ACS/WFC3, VLT/MUSE, ALMA, VLT/MUSE/XShooter). These observations combined with 116 hours of JWST NIRCam grism spectroscopy will create the most comprehensive survey of the CGM and the dawn of galaxy formation.

Our first EIGER papers are now available on astro-ph. Please visit the EIGER project website to learn more.

I am also involved with several additional JWST programs.

Students please contact me for more information.