Professor Brenna Mockler profiled in the L & S Magazine

Currently finishing up a fellowship at the Carnegie Theoretical Astrophysics Center in Pasadena, Calif., Mockler will join the UC Davis campus in summer 2026. The move is a homecoming.

Mockler was raised in Davis, and it was while she was attending Ralph Waldo Emerson Junior High that her fascination with space was ignited. 

“I specifically remember my seventh-grade teacher, Mr. Phillips, doing a unit about astronomy and just letting us ask questions about anything, and we talked one day about black holes,” Mockler said. “I still have that memory today; it was such an amazing class.”    

Mockler later studied physics at Cornell University and eventually earned a Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from UC Santa Cruz in 2022. 

“My research focuses on the growth and evolution of the supermassive black holes that live at the centers of most galaxies and also on how their evolution affects the life of the galaxy around them,” she said.  

The rest of this Letters and Science Magazine article can be found here.