Professor
Office: 507 Physics Building
Phone: +1 (530) 754-4418
Fax: +1 (530)752-4717
Email: lmlubin@ucdavis.edu
Personal Professional Website:
http://lubin.physics.ucdavis.edu
Research Interests:
Professor Lori Lubin joined the faculty at UCD in 2002. She is an observational cosmologist whose has spent her career detecting and studying the most massive virialized structures in the Universe, clusters of galaxies, across the full wavelength regime from the X-ray to the optical to the infrared. Because of their impact on both galaxy evolution and the global cosmology, clusters of galaxies provide the key environment to constrain cosmological models, as well as to study the physical processes that affect galaxies as they assembly into larger structures.
Her current research program focuses on studying galaxy associations -- from groups, to clusters, to superclusters - in their very early stages of development in order to understand the evolutionary history of galaxies and the formation of structure. With colleagues at UCD, UCSC, UCLA, Caltech, University of Hawaii, and University of Maryland, Lubin is Principal Investigator (PI) of the Observations of Redshift Evolution in Large Scale Environments (ORELSE) Survey, a comprehensive multi-wavelength study of galaxy properties in the large scale structure around 20 distant clusters of galaxies. This survey is the first of its kind to explore the large-scale filamentary structure, on scales of over 100 Megaparsecs, in the high-redshift Universe. It also capitalizes on all of the major observational facilities, including the three Great Observatories (the Hubble Space Telescope, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the Chandra X-ray Satellite), the largest optical/near-infrared telescopes in the world (the Keck 10-m Observatory), and the premier radio-wave facility (the Very Large Array).
Professor Lubin is also active in other projects including near-infrared spectral studies of high-redshift, active (starburst and active galactic nuclei) galaxies, X-ray and optical properties of moderate-redshift groups, and gravitational lenses and their environments. In addition, she is involved in the planning and preparation for the next generation of observational facilities, including the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) -- the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) -- a new ground-based facility led by the University of California, and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST).
Research Areas
Career History
- Ph.D., Princeton University, 1995
- Carnegie Postdoctoral Fellow, Observatories of the Carnegie Institute of Washington, 1995-1997
- Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow, California Institute of Technology, 1997-2000
- Associate Research Scientist, John Hopkins University, 2000-2001
- Assistant Professor, University of California, Davis, 2002-2004
- Associate Professor, University of California, Davis, 2004-2009
- Professor, University of California, Davis, 2009-present
- Vice-Chair for Administration and Undergraduate Affairs, University of California, Davis, 2006-2011, 2015-2019
- Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies, College of Letters and Science, University of California, Davis, 2021-present
Honors
- Chancellor’s Leadership Professor, 2016
- Awardee, Astrophysics Data Analysis Program Grant, 2015
- Awardee, NSF Astronomy & Astrophysics Research Grant, 2009 and 2014
- Chancellor’s Fellowship, 2006
- Awardee, NASA Long Term Space Astrophysics Grant, 2004
- Finalist, ASUCD Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, 2003
- Hubble Fellowship, California Institute of Technology, 1997
- Carnegie Fellowship, Observatories of the Carnegie Institution, 1995