Viraj Pandya

2025 Regional Award Finalist — Post-Doc

Viraj Pandya

Current Position:
Postdoctoral Research Scientist

Institution:
Columbia University

Discipline:
Astrophysics & Cosmology

Recognized for: Groundbreaking discoveries on early galaxy evolution, reshaping our understanding of how galaxies formed and challenging longstanding theories of the early universe.

Areas of Research Interest and Expertise:
Galaxy formation in a cosmological context, thermodynamics of galactic atmospheres, intrinsic alignments of early elongated protogalaxies, massively parallel and differentiable Bayesian modeling of complex dynamical systems, spectroscopic and multi-wavelength photometric galaxy surveys

Previous Positions:

BA (Economics and Mathematics), Rutgers University
Astronomy Research Assistant, Rutgers University (Advisors: Saurabh Jha, Rachel Somerville)
Post-Baccalaureate Fellow in Astrophysics, Princeton University (Advisor: Jenny Greene)
MA, University of California Santa Cruz (Advisors: Joel Primack, Jean Brodie)
PhD, University of California Santa Cruz (Advisors: Kevin Bundy, Rachel Somerville)
NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow, Columbia University (Advisor: Greg Bryan)

Research Summary:

Our universe’s evolution is a long-studied, hotly-debated subject – dark matter, dark energy, and regular matter all play important roles. Research driven by astrophysicist Viraj Pandya, PhD, shows an unexpected result about the early universe: instead of discs or spheres, most early galaxies had elongated, linear shapes aligned with larger-scale, thread-like "filaments" of dark matter that dictated their formation. Pandya’s work continues to study the co-evolution of visible and dark matter within and around galaxies using an interdisciplinary blend of theory, observations, and AI-accelerated data science, showing us how the echoes of the early universe continue to affect our galactic neighborhood.

“I am humbled and grateful to be recognized as a Blavatnik Scholar. This award gives me the confidence to continue my foundational research towards a fully predictive theory of galaxy formation—one of the grand challenges of modern astrophysics.”

Key Publications:

  1. V. Pandya, A. Loeb, E. McGrath, G. Barro, S. Finkelstein, H. Ferguson, N. Grogin, J. Kartaltepe, A. Koekemoer, C. Papovich, N. Pirzkal, L. Y. A. Yung. Preliminary Evidence for Lensing-Induced Alignments of High-Redshift Galaxies in JWST-CEERS. The Astrophysical Journal, 2025.
  2. V. Pandya, H. Zhang, M. Huertas-Company, K. Iyer, E. McGrath, G. Barro, S. Finkelstein, M. Kummel, W. Hartley, H. Ferguson, J. Kartaltepe, J. Primack, A. Dekel, S. Faber, D. Koo, G. Bryan, R. Somerville, R. Amorin, P. Arrabal-Haro, M. Bagley, E. Bell, E. Bertin, L. Costantin, R. Davé, M. Dickinson, R. Feldmann, A. Fontana, R. Gavazzi, M. Giavalisco, A. Grazian, N. Grogin, Y. Guo, C.H. Hahn, B. Holwerda, L. Kewley, A. Kirkpatrick, D. Kocevski, A. Koekemoer, J. Lotz, R. Lucas, C. Papovich, L. Pentericci, P. Perez-Gonzalez, N. Pirzkal, S. Ravindranath, C. Rose, M. Schefer, R. Simons, A. Straughn, S. Tacchella, J. Trump, A. de la Vega, S. Wilkins, S. Wuyts, G. Yang, L.Y.A. Yung. Galaxies Going Bananas: Inferring the 3D Geometry of High-Redshift Galaxies with JWST-CEERS. The Astrophysical Journal, 2024.
  3. V. Pandya, D. Fielding, G. Bryan, C. Carr, R. Somerville, J. Stern, C.A. Faucher-Giguère, Z. Hafen, D. Anglés-Alcázar, J. Forbes. A Unified Model for the Coevolution of Galaxies and Their Circumgalactic Medium: The Relative Roles of Turbulence and Atomic Cooling Physics. The Astrophysical Journal, 2023.
  4. V. Pandya, D. Fielding, D. Anglés-Alcázar, R. Somerville, G. Bryan, C. Hayward, J. Stern, C.G. Kim, E. Quataert, J. Forbes, C.A. Faucher-Giguère, R. Feldmann, Z. Hafen, P. Hopkins, D. Kereš, N. Murray, A. Wetzel. Characterizing mass, momentum, energy, and metal outflow rates of multiphase galactic winds in the FIRE-2 cosmological simulations. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 2021. 

Other Honors:

2023 Astronomy & Astrophysics Grant (#2307419), National Science Foundation
2021 Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship (#HST-HF2-51489), NASA
2020 Pre-Doctoral Fellowship in Computational Astrophysics, Flatiron Institute
2016 Osterbrock Leadership Fellowship, UC Santa Cruz
2016 Regents Fellowship, UC Santa Cruz
2016 Graduate Research Fellowship, National Science Foundation
2014 Post-Baccalaureate Fellowship in Astrophysics, Princeton University

In the Media:

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