As UWM prepares for the spring semester to begin, L&S is preparing to welcome a new faculty member to the ranks. We’re excited to introduce Lia Medeiros, who joined the Physics Department this month.
Lia Medeiros – Professor, Physics
PhD 2012, University of California, Santa Barbara
Previously a NASA Einstein Fellow at Princeton University
Research focus: I am a computational astrophysicist. My research focuses on simulating how black holes accrete matter, developing new machine learning algorithms to image black holes, and using black hole images to test our understanding of gravity.
Research discoveries: I am a member of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration (EHTC) and contributed to the first image of a black hole, published in April of 2019. We have since published images of the black hole at the center of our own galaxy as well and used these images to show that black holes in space are consistent with the very specific black hole predicted by Einstein’s theory. I also published a new, higher resolution version of this image in 2023, that showed that the bright ring of emission had half of the width of the previously published image.
Current projects: I am an active member of the EHTC, advise students on black hole related projects, and will soon publish a new version of my machine learning algorithm, which can produce multi-frequency movies of black holes.
Goals for the year: My goals for the coming year are to start my new group at UWM and get my students off on the right foot, and to begin to apply the new version of my machine learning algorithm to new data sets.
Fun Fact: When I am not using black holes in space to test gravity, I like to test gravity in a much more personal way, through controlled falls in aerial silks. Don’t worry, gravity still works; you do still fall. I checked.