Claudia Scarlata

Claudia Scarlata is a Distinguished McKnight University Professor and Director of the Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota's School of Physics and Astronomy. She maintains an active research program in astrophysics with numerous ongoing projects funded by NASA and other agencies.

Her research focuses on galaxy formation and evolution, particularly massive galaxies and the evolution of galaxy structure. She investigates the Lyα line as a cosmological tool, studying the escape of Lyα photons, large-scale structure, and Lyα blobs. Another major research area is reionization, with specific focus on Lyman continuum escape fraction and IR background fluctuations. Her work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals related to knowledge advancement.

Dr. Scarlata leads several major research initiatives including Constraining Dark Energy and Modified Gravity with Euclid (2024-2025), JWST as a Time Machine: Weighting the Carbon Produced Exclusively by Massive Stars (2024-2027), and Establishing the Geometry of Lyman Continuum Escape (2024-2027). Her recent publications (2025) show continued focus on high-redshift galaxies, Lyman continuum escape, and galaxy evolution across cosmic time.

• Distinguished McKnight University Professor
• Director of Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics

She is involved with major research collaborations including the Cosmology Survey Multi-Cycle Treasury Program (CANDELS), Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) Collaboration, and z-COSMOS Collaboration. Her research output is substantial with 203 publications to date and 75 projects and grants.