I am a YCAA Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics (YCAA), at Yale University in New Haven, CT, USA. In 2017 I graduated with a Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology (Pasadena, CA, USA). I was an International Fulbright Science and Technology Fellow for the first three years of graduate school, and a NASA Earth and Space Science Fellow for the following three years. Between 2017 and 2020 I was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University 's Black Hole Initiative and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, MA, USA.
My research is focused on observations, data analysis, and theoretical modeling of active galactic nuclei. Using X-ray spectroscopy, as well as observations at other wavelengths, I am trying to better understand the structures surrounding supermassive black holes. I am a member of several international collaborations, including the NuSTAR AGN Science Team , BAT AGN Spectroscopic Survey (BASS), Accretion History of AGN (AHA), and the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT). Within the EHT collaboration I work on coordinated multi-wavelength observations and I also served as the coordinator for public communications for three years, covering the globally coordinated announcement of the first resolved image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 in April 2019.
On this website you can find more details about my research , publications , CV , and outreach activities . To get in touch, please send me an e-mail .
News and Recent Updates
2023 Mar 26-30 -- presenting a poster and chairing the special session on EHT results at the 20th HEAD meeting (Waikoloa, HI, USA)
2023 Jan 08-12 -- two students I work with presented posters at the 241th AAS meeting (Seattle, WA, USA): Tristan Weaver & Olivia Aspegren
2022 Dec 13-15 -- conference Torus 2022: Smoke and Mirrors in Leiden, Netherlands, where I presented a talk
2022 Dec 01 -- presented a talk on X-ray torus modeling at the workshop SKIRT Days 2022 in Ghent, Belgium
2022 Nov 07-10 -- remotely participated in Exploring the Hot and Energetic Universe: 3rd Athena Scientific Conference with a poster
2022 Oct 03 -- presented an invited talk on EHT results at the physics conference LHC Days in Split 2022
2022 Sep 26-30 -- conference What Drives the Growth of Black Holes: A Decade of Reflection in Reykjavik, Iceland, where I presented a poster
2022 Aug 02 -- second data release and nine papers from the BASS collaboration; see ApJS summary & YaleNews article
2022 Jul 11-15 -- my workshop on multi-wavelength astronomy for local high-school students within the Pathways Summer Scholars program
2022 Jun 27-30 -- gave a talk at the symposium Towards the Next Generation of X-ray Surveys with Athena (EAS 2023 meeting) in Valencia, Spain
2022 Jun 20-22 -- presented a talk at the conference Ten Years of High-Energy Universe in Focus: NuSTAR 2022 in Cagliari, Italy
2022 Jun 14-17 -- talk at the XMM-Newton science workshop Black Hole Accretion Under the X-ray Microscope in Villafranca del Castillo, Spain
Check the box to list older updates below:
2022 May 26 -- talk at the NERQUAM 2022 meeting at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, CT, USA
2022 May 23 -- my 2018 first-author paper on AGN torus modeling reached over 100 citations according to NASA ADS
2022 May 13-22 -- articles based on my interviews on the image of Sgr A* published in YaleNews (in English) and Vecernji list (in Croatian)
2022 May 12 -- first image of Milky Way's central black hole, Sgr A*, by the EHT; see papers in ApJL , press release , and my translation to Croatian
2022 May 03 -- remotely presented a talk at the meeting of the THEAPA group, Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, UK
2022 Mar 16 -- presented a talk at the hybrid 19th Meeting of the High-energy Astrophysics Division of the AAS in Pittsburgh, PA, USA
2022 Feb 01 -- two new collaborative papers led by colleagues Federica Ricci and Nikita Kamraj recently posted on arXiv: here and here , respectively
2022 Jan 09-13 -- scheduled to give both a regular and an invited talk on EHT results at the 239th Meeting of the AAS, but it was canceled
2021 Dec 09 -- my PI proposal to observe megamaser AGN with XMM and NuSTAR was accepted into the XMM-Newton AO-21 program
2021 Dec 06-10 -- served on the "local" organizing committee of the virtual EHT Collaboration Meeting , and gave a talk
2021 Nov 05 -- presented a talk at the virtual Next-generation Event Horizon Telescope Meeting
2021 Oct 22 -- presented a talk at the virtual Fall 2021 Meeting of the American Physical Society, New England Section
2021 Oct 01 -- recently published EHT image of the jet in the galaxy Cen A featured on the cover of Nature Astronomy
2021 Sep 01-03 -- remotely participated in the hybrid conference Young Astronomers on Galactic Nuclei 2021 , where I presented an invited talk
2021 Aug 02 -- new first-author paper on properties of the obscuring torus in NGC 1052 published in the Astrophysical Journal: see ApJ or arXiv
2021 Jul 19 -- new EHT results on the relativistic jet in Cen A: see paper in Nature Astronomy , press release , and my translation to Croatian
2021 Jul 13 -- started contributing to the leadership of the Yale Postdoc Association (YPA) as a Communications Manager
2021 Jul 01 -- chaired a session in the 2-day symposium The Many Faces of Black Hole Accretion as a part of the bigger EAS 2021 meeting
2021 Jun 28 - Jul 2 -- participated in the virtual EAS 2021 meeting , where I was presenting my first e-poster (publicly accessible)
2021 Jun 16-18 -- participated in Hubble Space Telescope Cycle 29 Time Allocation Committee as an extragalactic panelist
2021 Jun 13 - Jul 4 -- participated in the Aspen Center for Physics workshop on Black Hole Formation, Accretion, and Outflows Through Cosmic Time
2021 Jun 16 -- two new collaborative papers led by colleagues Johannes Buchner and Jiachen Jiang posted on arXiv: here and here
2021 May 06 -- presented an invited seminar at the Astronomical Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences
2021 May 02 -- Yale Daily News published an article on recent EHT results for which I was interviewed by the author Nicole Rodriguez
2021 Apr 13 -- new EHT results on the M87 jet that I directly contributed to: see the press release , my YaleNews interview , the paper on ApJL or arXiv
2021 Mar 30-31 -- near-infrared spectroscopy observing run with the 200-inch (5.1-meter) Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory in CA, USA
2021 Mar 24 -- two new EHT papers on the image of the M87 black hole in polarized light published: describing the data and supporting theory
2021 Jan 21 -- talk on AGN obscuration modeling at the AHA Collaboration Virtual Meeting
2020 Dec 11 -- new first-author paper on properties of X-ray coronae in obscured AGN published in the Astrophysical Journal: see ApJ or arXiv
2020 Nov 13 -- end of my 3-year tenure as the EHT Outreach Working Group Coordinator (passing the role to CfA-based colleague Richard Anantua )
2020 Sep 23 -- the EHT Collaboration announced new results on the wobbling shadow of the black hole in M87 (paper: ApJ or arXiv )
2020 Sep 09 -- started my new position as a YCAA Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at Yale University , joining the group of Prof. Meg Urry
2020 May 08-09 -- participated in the Beyond the Ivory Tower Workshop for scientists writing for the public
2020 Apr 07 -- first result on a relativistic jet of a quasar (3C 279) from the EHT: see our press release or the paper in A&A
2020 Feb 14 -- talk at the High-energy Astrophysics Group Seminar , Netherlands Institute for Space Research (SRON), Utrecht, Netherlands
2020 Jan 24 -- two new collaborative papers with my contributions accepted for publication: on blazars PKS 2155-304 and Mrk 421 (arXiv links)
2020 Jan 17 -- talk at the NuSTAR Group Meeting at California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA
2020 Jan 04-09 -- talk and poster presented at the 235th American Astronomical Society Meeting in Honolulu, HI, USA
2019 Nov 15 -- published a research note describing new spectral fitting models: Baloković et al. 2019, RNAAS, 3, 173 (PDF , models )
2019 Nov 13 -- paper led by graduate student Nikita Kamraj accepted for publication in ApJ and posted on arXiv
2019 Oct 31 -- article summarizing the media campaign for the first results from the EHT Collaboration published in CAPJ
2019 Sep 16 -- seminar at the Physics Department, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Zagreb in Zagreb, Croatia
2019 Sep 05 -- 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics to be awarded to the EHT Collaboration (in Croatian news: Jutarnji list )
2019 Jul 17 -- talk at the XCalibur 2019 conference on high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy in Winchester, UK
2019 Jul 05 -- popular-level CfA Science Update highilghted my work with collaborators published in Kynoch et al. 2019, MNRAS, 487, 181
2019 May 20 -- chairing a session at the Third Annual Black Hole Initiative Conference in Cambridge, MA, USA
2019 Apr 25 -- talk at the High-energy Group Meeting at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA
2019 Apr 23 -- interviews on the EHT given in Croatian media: article on Index , radio shows Zvjezdoznanci and Eppur si muove (recording here )
2019 Apr 17 -- talk at the cross-institutional Joint AGN Meeting at European Southern Observatory Headquarters in Santiago, Chile
2019 Apr 10 -- attended press conference presenting first results from the EHT in Washington DC (recording here )
2019 Mar 17-21 -- attended the 17th HEAD Meeting in Monterey, CA, USA (poster presented)
2019 Mar 10 -- white papers I contributed to submitted for the Astro 2020 Decadal Survey: on AGN coronae , obscured AGN & CXB , and STROBE-X
2019 Feb 01 -- started working with graduate student Samantha Cabral (Universty of Massachusetts Boston) on her M.Sc. thesis project
2018 Dec 14 -- invited talk at the Torus 2018: The Many Faces of AGN Obscuration conference in Puerto Varas, Chile
2018 Dec 05 -- infrared spectropscopy PI proposal for the Magellan telescope (FIRE instrument) approved for semester 2019A
2018 Nov 05-09 -- participated in the EHT collaboration meeting in Nijmegen, Netherlands
2018 Oct 18-19 -- two short talks at the Accretion History of AGN meeting at the University of Miami, FL, USA
2018 Jul 16 -- theoretical PI proposal approved in the Chandra Cycle 20 Review
2018 Jul 04-06 -- visit and Institute of Astronomy Seminar at the University of Cambridge, UK
2018 Jul 02-03 -- visit and Astronomy Group Seminar at the University of Southampton, UK
2018 Jun 03 -- poster presentation at the Flipped Science Fair outreach event at J. F. Kennedy School (elementary/K-8) in Somerville, MA, USA
2018 May 23 -- short talk at the NERQUAM 2018 meeting at Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA
2018 Apr 30 -- release of the Event Horizon Telescope Animated Movie , on which I worked with animator Chris Jones and the SAO-EHT group
2018 Mar 22 -- short talk at the Institute for Theory and Computation Luncheon (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA)
2018 Feb 28 -- High Energy Seminar at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA
2018 Jan 16 -- new paper on the application of my borus02 ADS
2018 Apr 22 -- participated in Cambridge Explores the Universe at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, MA, USA
2017 Oct 23 -- talk at the Narayan group meeting (Black Hole Initiative, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA)
2017 Oct 20 -- short talk at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics Postdoc Symposium in Cambridge, MA
2017 Oct 03 -- talk at the Black Hole Initiative Colloquium (Harvard University, Cambridge, MA)
2017 Sep 19 -- talk at the STROBE-X Science Definition Team Meeting in Lubbock, TX
2017 Sep 07 -- talk at The Power of X-ray Spectroscopy conference in Warsaw, Poland
2017 May 25 -- successfully defended my PhD thesis entitled Unveiling the Structure of AGN with Hard X-ray Spectroscopy
2017 Feb 28 -- new paper published (led by junior graduate student Y. Xu) -- ApJ, 837, 21 (ADS )
2017 Jan 04 -- talk at the AAS Winter Meeting in Grapevine, TX, USA -- talk schedule
2016 Dec 22 -- new spectral templates for broadband X-ray modeling of the AGN torus -- here
2016 Dec 05 -- talk at the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department (TAC seminar) -- abstract
2016 Nov 14-17 -- NuSTAR Science Meeting in Pasadena, CA -- conference website
2016 Nov 08 -- talk at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics -- abstract
Research Topics
My work covers various topics in studies of supermassive black holes and active galactic nuclei. You can find more details about my research projects here . Below is a word cloud generated from the titles and abstracts of the papers I significantly contributed to (find them here ):
