Astrophysicist Blakesley Burkhart Named a 2021 Sloan Research Fellow

Blakesley Burkhart, an associate research scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Astrophysics, has been awarded a 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. These fellowships “recognize and reward outstanding early-career faculty who have the potential to revolutionize their fields of study.”

Burkhart is a leader in the study of magnetic turbulence across all scales of the universe. Her areas of focus include star formation, studies of the dynamics of the gases that fill the space between stars, and the turbulent nature of galaxies near and far. That work will improve the understanding of galaxy evolution. Guided by analytic theory, she employs innovative techniques to compare observational data with numerical simulations. In addition to her position at the Flatiron Institute, she is an assistant professor at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey.

Burkhart joined the Flatiron Institute in August 2018. She received her Ph.D. in astronomy at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was an Einstein Fellow and a joint ITC/SMA Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in the Institute for Theory and Computation. In 2019, she received the Annie Jump Cannon Award in Astronomy, which recognizes outstanding research by postdoctoral female researchers. In 2020, she was named a Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering.