Claire Bolda is a senior majoring in Physics with an Astronomy Emphasis who is currently involved in extragalactic astronomy research with Dr. Dawn Erb. Since the fall of 2021, she and Dr. Erb have been researching a pair of galaxies in a large-scale galaxy filament using observations from the Keck Cosmic Web Imager (KCWI), an integral field spectrograph on the Keck II Telescope. Spatially resolved spectra taken by KCWI of extended gaseous halos, called Lyman-α halos, surrounding each galaxy indicate that gas may be flowing into one of these galaxies from its environment or from a potential merger between the galaxies. Claire and Dr. Erb are attempting to determine the source of the inflowing gas more precisely, as this will provide insight into how galaxies in the early universe acquire gas to fuel new star formation. Additionally, Claire has participated in pulsar astronomy research through the Student Team of Astrophysics Researchers (STARS@UWM) directed by Dr. David Kaplan and Dr. Sarah Vigeland since the fall of 2019, first as a student researcher and now as a student leader. Through this opportunity, she made the initial discovery of two pulsars, PSR J2035+36 and PSR J2041+46, in the Green Bank Telescope’s 820 MHz pulsar survey. In the near future, Claire plans to submit a paper about her research with Dr. Erb for publication and hopefully pursue a PhD in astrophysics.

2022-2023 SERA Recipients