Profile Details
As an ESA/AURA astronomer, Dr Nimisha Kumari devotes half of her time to supporting JWST and the other half to conducting her independent research. She currently serves JWST as the Lead of the JWST Science Operations Calibration Planning Team and as the Calibration lead of the JWST/NIRSpec Instrument team. She joined STScI in 2019, as a STScI Prize Fellow in the HST/COS team.
Dr. Kumari's research is mainly driven by questions related to galaxy formation and evolution. She focuses on its three fundamental properties - chemical abundances, star formation, and gas dynamics. She addresses these questions via observational studies of emission line galaxies, primarily using integral field and multi-object spectrographs. She is also experienced with ultraviolet spectroscopy and multi-wavelength (FUV, optical, IR, radio) data analysis from various ground-based and space-borne instruments.
Before joining STScI in 2019, she was an independent research fellow funded by a Schlumberger fellowship, working mainly with Profs. Roberto Maiolino and Mike Irwin at the University of Cambridge. She also completed her PhD in Astronomy there in October 2018 supervised by Prof. Mike Irwin and Dr. Bethan James. STScI provided her a great opportunity to pursue an astronomy project as a summer student in 2013, when she worked as summer student with Dr. Andrew Fox. She cares about making education and astronomy available to all and has been a part of several outreach efforts.
Education:
PhD in Astronomy, University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
MSc in Astrophysics, Ecole Polytechnique, France
MSc (Multidisciplinary), Ecole Polytechnique, France
MRes (Astronomy, Astrophysics & Spatial Engineering), Ecole Polytechnique, France
BSc (Honors) Physics, University of Delhi, India
Science Interests:
- Local analogues of high redshift galaxies, star-forming galaxies, emission line galaxies
- Star-forming regions, diffuse ionised gas, compact high-velocity clouds
- Physics of the interstellar medium, chemical abundances, metallicity gradients
- Metallicity scaling relations, Metallicity diagnostics, Schmidt relation of star-formation
Research Topics: Star Formation, Histories, and Evolution, High- Redshift Galaxies; Galaxy Formation and Evolution, Interstellar Medium, Astrochemistry, Chemical Abundances
Professional Websites:
ORCID ID: 0000-0002-5320-2568
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