Crystal Martin

Crystal Martin received her PhD from the University of Arizona in 1996. Her first fellowship award was a Hubble Fellowship which she took to the Space Telescope Science Institute. She then held a Sherman Fairchild Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology from 1999-2002. Crystal joined the UC Santa Barbara Physics faculty in 2002. Past awards include a Packard Fellowship and a Sloan Research Fellowship.

Research

The Galaxy Evolution Group, led by Professor Martin, studies galaxy assembly and cosmic reionization. Astromical observations form the foundation for this work; the team uses spectroscopy and imaging to measure physical properties of stars and gas, both in and around galaxies. Interpretation and modeling of these data applies concepts from hydrodynamics, radiative transfer, cosmology, and stellar evolution. Building our knowlege of the interplay between the circumgalactic medium and galaxies allows us to understand the regulation of the cosmic star formation rate and, also, how the universe underwent its last phase transition, from a neutral to an ionized intergalactic medium.