معرفی
Aaron Smith is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), affiliated with the School of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. His research focuses on computational astrophysics, particularly the formation of early galaxies and the Epoch of Reionization. He leads the THESAN and THESAN-ZOOMS simulation projects and develops radiative transfer codes like COLT and AREPO-MCRT.
Education: Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin (2018), B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from Brigham Young University (2012).
Research interests include high-redshift galaxies, radiation hydrodynamics, and synthetic observations to interpret cosmological data. Recent work explores Lyman-α feedback mechanisms and the persistence of Population III star formation during reionization.
His scientific awards include the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (2014). Funding includes a NASA ATP grant ($308,200) and major HPC allocations (e.g., 51M CPU hours on SuperMUC-NG). He has published extensively in 2025 on topics like galactic evolution during reionization and cosmic dawn dynamics.
Professional appointments include ITC Postdoc at Harvard (2022–2023) and NASA Einstein Fellow at MIT (2018–2022).
