ABSTRACT

The host galaxies of long-duration gamma-ray bursts (LGRBs) are an excellent means of probing the environments and populations that produced their unusual progenitors. In addition, these same young stellar progenitors make LGRBs powerful tracers of star formation and metallicity at high redshift. However, properly interpreting these events as probes of the early universe requires a thorough understanding of their underlying progenitor population and its evolution. In this talk I will discuss the most recent work being done on how massive stellar evolution is impacted by the stars’ host environments and the resulting implications for studying LGRBs and these events' cosmological applications, progenitors, and pre-explosion properties.

About the Speaker:

Emily Levesque is an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Washington. She earned a SB in Physics from MIT in 2006, a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Hawaii in 2010, and was an Einstein fellow and Hubble fellow at the University of Colorado at Boulder from 2010-2015. Her research is focused on improving our overall understanding of massive stars, both locally and in the early universe, so that we can effectively use them as cosmological tools. In 2014 she received the Annie Jump Cannon prize from the American Astronomical Society. More information about Dr. Levesque and her research can be found at http://www.emlevesque.com.