Thomas Donlon II, Ph.D.
Postdoctoral astrophysicist studying the Milky Way's dark matter and dynamical history through acceleration measurements and computational modeling of our Galaxy.
About Me
I am currently a post-doc at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, where I work in Prof. Lucy Fortson's group. I am also involved in Zooniverse, a citizen science platform that allows the public to participate in scientific research.
The focus of my current research is using direct acceleration measurements to study the dark matter content of the Milky Way. I aim to use real-time Galactic dynamics to answer how our Galaxy formed, evolved, and continues to change. My other interests include Galactic structure, Galactic archaeology, pulsars, variable stars, and shell galaxies. My work combines observational data with computational physics and machine learning techniques in order to make discoveries about our Galaxy.
I obtained my PhD at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 2023, where I studied the structure and chemical makeup of our Galaxy with Prof. Heidi Jo Newberg. I also spent time as a post-doc at the University of Alabama in Huntsville with Prof. Sukanya Chakrabarti, where I studied pulsars and their use as probes of Galactic structure.