Laya Ghodsi

University of British Columbia

Galaxies are one of the most important observable objects and the building blocks of the universe. They are made up of dark matter, stars, and gas. The cold gaseous component of galaxies can compress and form new stars under specific physical conditions. The star formation activity of galaxies, in general, depends on their gas resources to fuel star formation and the efficiency of forming new stars. Among the different parameters that affect these two properties of galaxies, the galactic environment interests me the most. Since star formation is a multi-physics and multi-scale process, the environment of galaxies at different physical scales can affect them through interactions with galaxy clusters and neighbour galaxies at the large scale down to interactions with nearby diffuse gas at smaller physical scales.

Using both observational data sets and cosmological simulations, I am trying to shed new light on the relationship between galactic star formation and the environments of galaxies at different physical scales.

Image of the Virgo cluster of galaxies taken with the Palomar Observatory 48-inch Schmidt telescope as part of the Digitized Sky Survey 2. Virgo is a large cluster of more than 1300 galaxies, making it a “crowded” area for galaxies to live in and evolve with many interactions with neighbours! (Credit: ESO/Digitized Sky Survey 2)