Matthew Wilde

Astronomy

Mentors: Jess Werk, Julianne Dalcanton
eScience Mentor: Yen-Chi Chen

Matthew Wilde is a PhD student in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington. His interests include climbing mountains and amateur dendrology.

His research is focused on the gas that surrounds galaxies, the so-called circumgalactic medium (CGM). The CGM is responsible for fueling star formation and thus galaxy evolution over cosmic time, but its physics are dominated by the complex interplay of gas accreting onto the galaxy balanced by feedback from exploding stars in the galaxy.

Matthew is constructing a large spectroscopic database that will require the use of statistical and machine learning methods to tease out the complex gas physics taking place in the CGM.

Matthew received his BS in Physics with honors from the University of Texas at Austin before moving to New York City to work as a research assistant in the Department of Astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. After five amazing years, he chose to move to Seattle to pursue his PhD at the University of Washington. He is also a member of the Big Data IGERT Fellowship program through the eScience Institute at the UW.