KXAN Shardha Jogee 's Homepage

Dr. Shardha Jogee
Department of Astronomy
The University of Texas at Austin
1 University Station C1400
Austin, TX 78712-0259

Email: sj@astro.as.utexas.edu
Phone: (512) 471 1395
Fax : (512) 471 6016
Office : PMA 15.326
URL : http://www.as.utexas.edu/~sj

Education

Dr. Shardha Jogee is a Professor in the Astronomy Department and the holder of the Rex G. Baker, Jr. and McDonald Centennial Professorship at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin. She served as the Department Chair from 2015 to 2019. She holds a Bachelor's degree in Physics from the University of Cambridge in England, and Master's and Ph.D. degrees in Astronomy from Yale University in the USA. Prior to joining the faculty at UT Austin, Dr. Jogee conducted research at Caltech and the Space Telescope Science Institute, which oversees the scientific operations of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. At UT, Dr. Jogee's scientific research explores how galaxies and their constituent stars, black holes and dark matter halos grow across cosmic time, using NASA's space telescopes, McDonald Observatory and other ground telescopes, and the Texas Advanced Computing Center. She is a member of several international science teams, has won over $3.8 M in external grants and authored over 200 publications with over 8,600 citations. Dr. Jogee is an alumna of Leadership Texas 2014 and a Public Voices Fellow with the OpEd Project. She strongly supports a broader participation of young women and under-represented groups in STEM and the essential partnership between researchers, government, the private sector, and philanthropists in advancing higher education and society.

Appointments
Short Bio
CV with Bibliography
Research
Teaching
Public Outreach
Education and Appointments


  • Postdoctoral Scholar, Astronomy, CalTech, U.S.A (1999-2002)
  • Assistant Astronomer (tenure-track), Space Telescope Science Institute (which oversees the science operation of NASA's space facilities, including the Hubble Space Telesope and the James Webb Space Telescope) U.S.A (2002--2004)
  • Certificate in UT Executive Management and Leadership Program (UTEMLP; June 2018).

Research Program


Research Overview: My research addresses central questions on the evolution of galaxies as a function of cosmic epoch, mass, and environment. How do galaxies grow their stars, black holes, and dark matter halos across cosmic time and vastly different environments? What is the role played by theoretically predicted growth modes, such as violent mergers of galaxies and slower more `quiescent' modes (e.g., gas accretion along cosmological filaments and secular evolution driven by bars)? How do galaxy clusters -- some of the largest bound structures in the Universe -- XMM-Newton,form? My research group has led a large number of highly cited refereed papers on the structure, evolution, and assembly history of galaxies within several international science collaborations, which have conducted some of the largest or deepest galaxy surveys to date with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope, Herschel-SPIRE, Chandra XMM-Newton, GALEX, and many ground-based observatiories, including McDonald Observatory:

Summary of Publications: As of October 15, 2021, my publication record includes over 203 publications with over 8,600 citations (including 24 papers with over 100 citations), a current citation rate of over 440 citations per year, and an h-index of 46. A detailed bibliography is provided in Appendix B of my online CV

Summary of Grant Awards: I have been awarded ~$3.8 M in external research and education grants over the period 2004 to 2020. (For multi-institution grants, the grant amounts listed above include only the amount awarded to my institution with me as PI, Co-PI, or Co-I.) Research grants account for $3.1 M, of which ~$2.6 M are from grants where I am the Principal Investigator (PI). Education and outreach grants account for ~$0.7 M. In terms of recent awards since 2014, I have been the PI of three NSF AAG grants (2014, 2015, 2017), two Heising-Simons Foundation grants (2018, 2019), and one NASA grant (2014) for a total of ~$2.2 M. A detailed list of grant awards is provided in Appendix A of my online CV .

Research highlights: Some key results from my group include: (a) While earlier work suggested a dearth of barred galaxies at earlier times, we were the first to demonstrate that strong stellar bars are common in massive disk galaxies over the last eight billion years, a period long enough for bars to drive significant secular evolution of galaxies (Jogee et al. 2004); (b) We showed that contrary to common lore, only at most 30% of the cosmic star formation rate density can be assigned to visible major mergers over half of the age of the Universe. We also set the first empirical constraints on the minor merger rate of galaxies over that epoch (Jogee et al. 2009); (c) We found that when the Universe was merely a few billion years old, the majority (>60%) of massive galaxies were disk-dominated and over a third were ultra-compact (Weinzirl, Jogee et al. 2011). This result poses serious challenges to current state-of-the-art theoretical models. (d) Using a sample of massive galaxies from SHELA/HETDEX that is an order of magnitude larger than other studies to date, we robustly measure the high-mass end of the stellar mass function of star-forming galaxies at 1.5 < z <3.5 and stress-test theoretical models of galaxy formation. Predictions from IllustrisTNG 300 hydrodynamical simulations agree within a factor of a few with our results, but three semi-analytic models (SAMS) -- SAG, SAGE,GALACTICUS -- with different AGN feedback moddes underestimate the number density of massive galaxies by up to a factor of 1000. This suggests that the physics of galaxy evolution and/or its sub-grid implementations need to be revisited in the SAMS (Sherman Jogee, Florez et al. 2020a, accepted)

The Hubble Ultra Deep Field (HUDF), the deepest visible-light image ever made of the Universe, (Credit: NASA, ESA, S Beckwith and HUDF home team ) shows the first galaxies to emerge from the so-called "dark ages," (the time shortly after the big bang when the first stars reheated the cold, dark universe), and chronicles a period when the universe was younger and more chaotic, with violent interactions between galaxies.
Public Education and Outreach

Please see CV for a full updated list. Below are a few selected activities:
Teaching

  • Astro 358 :Galaxies and the Universe (Upper Division course for Physics and Astronomy Majors): Spring 2021 , Spring 2012, Spring 2009, Spring 2008, Spring 2006
  • Astro 386s: Graduate Seminar in Extragalactic Astronomy (for Ph.D. students): Fall 2014, Spring 2014, Fall 2013, Fall 2006,Spring 2006,Spring 2005, etc
  • Astro 376 : A Practical Introduction to Research (Upper division course for Astronomy and Physics Majors. Can also be taken by Freshmen who want to enroll in the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) stream): Spring 2021, Fall 2013, Fall 2012,Fall 2011,Fall 2010,Fall 2009,
  • Astro 104: Undergraduate Astronomy Seminar (Science Majors): Fall 2008
  • Astro 301: Introduction to Astronomy (for non-science majors): Fall 2006,Fall 2005.
WWW home page (last update November 2021)