Fiona McCluskey

Astrophysics Ph.D. Candidate at UC Davis

About Me

I am a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Davis. I work with Prof. Andrew Wetzel as a part of the FIRE collaboration and use cosmological zoom-in simulations to study the formation and evolution of Milky Way-mass galaxies.

I graduated in 2019 from Bryn Mawr College, where I did research with Prof. Kate Daniel on the dynamical effects of resonances on stellar orbits in analytical simulations of spiral galaxies.

Outside of astronomy, I enjoy trivia, chess, skiing, hiking and spending time with my friends and cats in Davis and my family in New Hampshire.

Research

Links to publications and CV

Stellar Kinematics across the Formation Histories of MW-like Galaxies

We study the kinematics of stars both at their formation and today within 14 Milky Way (MW)-mass galaxies from the FIRE-2 cosmological zoom-in simulations.

Disk Settling or Dynamical Heating?

We quantify the relative importance of cosmological disk settling and post-formation dynamical heating on the current kinematics of disk stars.

When do Galactic Disks Form?

We quantified when stars began to form with rotation-dominated kinematics. The lookback time that the disk began to settle correlates with its dynamical state today: earlier-settling galaxies currently form colder disks.

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