ZTF Faces

Erica Hammerstein

PhD student at the University of Maryland, USA

Where was your starting point and how did you discover astronomy?

I grew up in Canton, Michigan and spent a lot of time about 20 minutes away in Ann Arbor during high school. This, not surprisingly, led me to pursue a degree at the University of Michigan. I graduated from the University of Michigan in 2018 with a bachelor’s degree in Astronomy & Astrophysics where I began my research career focusing on studying supermassive black holes and their radio jets; but my interest in astronomy began long before that. I first became interested in astronomy back in elementary school when we did a unit on the solar system in science class. The teacher assigned groups of students to paint a styrofoam ball to look like a planet and give a presentation on that planet to the class. My friend and I had Jupiter and to this day Jupiter remains my favorite planet. By the time I was in middle school, I had my own telescope and told just about everyone I knew that I was going to be an astronomer one day.

How did you discover ZTF?

After undergrad, I moved to the University of Maryland and I received my master’s degree there in 2020. I began working with ZTF through my master’s thesis, where I characterized the host galaxies of tidal disruption events (TDEs) discovered within the survey.

What are you playing with in the ZTF playground?

I am now in my 5th year of graduate school at the University of Maryland and I continue to be heavily involved in the ZTF collaboration. I am part of the AGN and TDE science working group, where we search for transients occurring in the nuclei of galaxies related to the supermassive black holes lurking there. My thesis would not be possible without the awesome TDE discoveries we have made with ZTF and I am primarily focused on characterizing TDEs and their host galaxies at optical and ultraviolet wavelengths.

Where do you want to steer your rocket in the future?

After I graduate (hopefully in the Spring of 2024), I hope to continue my work on TDEs and transients in a postdoctoral position. Until then, I’ll be hard at work trying to discover more TDEs in ZTF!

If you were not an astronomer, what would you be?

In college, I was actually very interested in psychology and took quite a few psychology courses. If I had not pursued astronomy I probably would have done psychology instead. Although these days I think I would probably want to do something more artistic and hone my fiber art skills. I crochet and loom knit a lot and I have a wild idea to make a giant tapestry depicting a tidal disruption event.

A book that shook your worldview?

I would have to say, as silly as it may be, that Griffiths Introduction to Quantum Mechanics (2nd Edition) is a book that changed my worldview. When I was studying physics in undergrad, this book was my best friend and I still have it on my bookshelf (and reference it) in my office to this day. First learning about quantum mechanics is fun and makes you think about a lot of things differently!

If you’ve had a bad day at work, you will….

If I have a bad day at work, I’ll probably sit down and crochet to relax. It’s a very methodical craft and a great way to get your mind off things. If I get tired of that, you’ll probably find me playing video games with friends online.