Justin Spilker

Justin Spilker is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Texas A&M University since 2022. Previously, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Texas at Austin (2017–2022) and earned his PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics from the University of Arizona in 2017 under Dr. Dan Marrone. His research focuses on galaxy formation and quenching processes, utilizing radio/submillimeter telescopes like ALMA and the VLA.

Education: PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics (University of Arizona, 2017), Postdoctoral Fellowships (NASA Hubble, Harlan J. Smith).

Research interests include galactic winds, gravitational lensing, and metal enrichment in the interstellar medium. Key projects include the South Pole Telescope Submillimeter Galaxy (SPTSMG) collaboration and the SQuIGGLE survey of post-starburst galaxies. He has pioneered studies on spatially resolved molecular outflows in high-redshift galaxies, published in Science (2018) and Nature (2018).

Collaborations: SPTSMG, SQuIGGLE, TEMPLATES (JWST Early Release Science), and LEGA-C. He emphasizes open data sharing via GitHub and has led efforts to refine far-infrared metallicity measurements in dwarf galaxies.