Interested in joining the lab / getting involved /receiving updates and news from what our group is doing / doing an internship / or just chatting with someone from the group? Please fill out this form and we will be in contact: https://forms.gle/rr2kfbJ74pczVrvn7
See note at the bottom for PhD inquiries.
San Diego and the Astronomy Department at UCSD:
UC San Diego & the Astronomy Department
The UCSD Astronomy department offers an exciting and vibrant research community in astronomy & astrophysics. The Astronomy department is a brand new department (split off from Physics) and has recently hired several (>5) new faculty in the department, further fueling the already energetic, supportive, and collegial environment of the Astronomy department. We have amazing students, staff, postdocs, visitors, researchers and faculty at UCSD that together form an amazing collaborative and innovative community of astronomers in San Diego. UCSD Astronomy has many experts in theory, observations, data science, and instrumentation. For all information see:
- UCSD website: https://astro.ucsd.edu/
- research areas: https://astro.ucsd.edu/research/areas/index.html
- People: https://astro.ucsd.edu/people/index.html
The UCSD Astronomy department is located on the beautiful UCSD campus that includes access to nearby opportunities such as:
- The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC): https://www.sdsc.edu/
- Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute at UC San Diego: https://datascience.ucsd.edu/
In addition, UCSD collaborates closely with nearby institutions such as San Diego State University.
See for more information https://astro.ucsd.edu/research/labs/index.html
San Diego
San Diego is a gorgeous city in California, USA with perfect sunny weather all year around, beautiful beaches (including on campus), and offers amazing outdoors sports (beach volleyball/surfing) and nature and wildlife (including seals!) At the same time San Diego also offers a vibrant city to live in with lots of history, culture, food, music venues, events, and shops. San Diego and the University is very commutable, especially with the new train line entering campus. All in all San Diego and UCSD can offer an incredible quality of life!
For more info see:
https://www.sandiego.org/campaigns/international/san-diego-is-americas-coolest-city.aspx
https://www.sealtours.com/san-diego/reasons-to-visit/
Join UCSD & my group for your PhD!
I will be taking PhD students, and me and my other colleagues at UCSD are extremely excited to have students apply to our UCSD graduate school. Below is some info for how to apply. https://astro.ucsd.edu/grad/admissions/index.html
I encourage students to apply for PhD fellowships including NSF, NASA FINESST, Hertz, DoE, etc. See for a full list of fellowships and PhD application resources https://www.broekgaarden.nl/floor/wordpress/eca-resources-applying-for-phd-postdoc-faculty-and-more/
Note that some fellowships such as NSF have deadlines as early as October 15 2024.
You can read more about my group, and our research at https://www.broekgaarden.nl/floor/wordpress/research-pag/ and https://www.broekgaarden.nl/floor/wordpress/mentoring/
Fill out the form, or reach out to me via email if you are interested and want to learn more! I am happy to discuss possible projects you can do or apply with.
Join UCSD & my group for your Postdoc!
Ask me about Postdoc positions that are available within my group. In addition, I encourage interested students to apply for the following fellowships that you can bring to work with me at UCSD:
- NSF Postdoc fellowship (for US Citizens/residents): https://new.nsf.gov/funding/postdocs
- NHFP Fellowship (Hubble): https://www.nhfp-equity.org/resources-for-applicants
- UCSD Schmidt AI in Science Fellowship https://postdoc.ucsd.edu/funding/schmidt-ai/index.html
- UCSD Chanellor’s Postdoc Fellowship/ UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship Program https://facultydiversity.ucsd.edu/postdoc/ & https://ppfp.ucop.edu/info/how-to-apply/
- L’Oreal USA for Women in Science Fellowship: https://www.loreal.com/en/usa/pages/group/fwis/
See form on top of this website to stay in contact.
Visit UCSD & my group for a talk / research visit
We have several opportunities to host researchers. My group meetings are hybrid and we welcome talk contributions from external speakers in the fields of stellar evolution, gravitational waves, data science and statistics as well as many other topics starting this fall. In addition, me and my group are happy to host scientists at the UCSD for in person talks (but this typically requires self-funding). Please reach out to me if you are interested in one of these.
Additionally there are several opportunities to visit through the following programs:
- Margaret Burbidge Visiting Professorship, (for faculty) https://astro.ucsd.edu/research/burbidge/index.html
- Please email me if you want to come and visit or give a hybrid talk!
Information for students applying this year to UCSD
Response to PhD inquiries
Dear reader
Unfortunately, I get a lot of PhD inquiries over email and don’t have the time to respond to all of them, so for equity reasons I have to say no to zoom meetings or additional discussions. Our grad program admins are happy to answer any questions you might have about our application process over email, and I would of course be happy to discuss possible research projects in my group and how they fit with the goals that you might have once you get admitted to our program.
I will add some info about our department and my research group below.
It’s great to hear that you are considering applying to the grad program at our Astronomy & Astrophysics (A&A) department at UC San Diego! Of course I (and others) would be delighted to have you join UCSD and potentially also join my group and/or the brand new UCSD A&A Theory & Simulations “STRANDS” group, as well as a new “SMASH” initiative between Physics, Astrophysics, Machine Learning, AI, and Computer Science that we are building!
UCSD is a exciting department as it’s in the middle of a large expansion, including that it hired 6 new faculty that started last year, which includes myself (https://www.broekgaarden.nl/floor/wordpress/), and in this research area many others. This is on top of the already wonderful faculty, staff, research scientists, students, and postdocs that make up the A&A UCSD department. Together with the rest of the department, this provides an exceptional group of people working on broad aspects ranging from cosmology, Dark Matter & Energy, galaxy evolution, Stellar Evolution and processes, GW Astrophysics, HEA, and software/simulations/data science/AI/ML (see for a list with names here: https://astro.ucsd.edu/research/areas/index.html)
This rapid expansion comes with a lot of opportunities and resources, incl. that we are starting many new events, have many new graduate students, and are hosting many visitors in the coming years (including in GW astrophysics), and are very open to new ideas and suggestions. Personally, I am not sure yet if I will be hiring and looking for graduate students to join my group this fall. It will depend on the details of funding that I will hear from later this October.
The department is extremely collegial, friendly, and supportive of its members. And the campus is beautifully located in La Jolla San Diego (with many beautiful beaches at your doorstep and great weather all year round),
In addition, UC San Diego provides a lot of access and resources within the UC San Diego, San Diego and UC networks. Some of the things that I often use/really appreciate include: access to many telescopes such as Keck, nearby institutes that excel in data science, super computing and ML/AI including The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC): https://www.sdsc.edu/, Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute (HDSI) at UC San Diego: https://datascience.ucsd.edu/ as well that UCSD (and myself) collaborates closely with nearby institutions such as San Diego State University (which has among other people Ana Rosen) and the UC San Diego Physics department (which has Brian Keating, George Fuller among many others).
If you were to join UCSD and if funding allows, I would be excited to work with you (either as main supervisor or as collaborator) or be a mentor for you. For your information, my group includes, and will welcome students working on, stellar evolution, neutron stars & black holes, basically anything gravitational waves, astro-statistics, AI (check out our AstroAI center; https://astroai.cfa.harvard.edu/), simulations, data science, white dwarfs, pulsars, kilonovae, GRBs & SNe, and many more topics. My group consists this fall of 3 joint postdocs (joint with Kyle Kremer), 4-5 PhD students from Physics & Astronomy (some co-advised), and 6-10 undergraduate students. See updates on https://www.broekgaarden.nl/floor/wordpress/mentoring/ or news for more details
I’m also happy to share my research philosophy, I really see my responsibility as a “supporter”: I usually sit down with each of the students I work with and try to listen to what research they want to do, what goals they have, and what skills (both academic and professional skills) they want to learn and then try to adapt my advising style accordingly — especially by trying to connect you to many resources (including connecting to a larger network such as opportunities to presenting your work, providing you with a large mentoring village, and helping acquire the skills to make you successful in a PhD and beyond). As a new faculty member, I’m still learning a lot, but I have a lot of energy, ideas, and enthusiasm that I hope to share with the students I mentor.
Unfortunately, I am not sure yet whether I will have funding to admit new students in my group, given the uncertain funding environment, but I want to share some fantastic opportunities to bring in your own funding. This includes.
- NSF GRFP (for US Citizens/residents only): deadline ~Oct 15 http://nsfgrfp.org/
- Ford Foundation Fellowship https://www.nationalacademies.org/our-work/ford-foundation-fellowships
- NDSEG https://ndseg.sysplus.com/
- DOE CSGF (There is a lot of simulated-focused research that would fit in my group) http://www.krellinst.org/csgf/
- Hertz http://www.hertzfoundation.org/
- NASA FINESST Fellowship
Note that not all fellowships might apply to you/your research, and most have deadlines later in the year / once you are in the PhD program.
You can find more information and resources for applying to PhDs (including links to previous research statements, and youtube workshops on graduate school applications) on my website;https://www.broekgaarden.nl/floor/wordpress/eca-resources-applying-for-phd-postdoc-faculty-and-more/
More information about applying to our graduate program can be found online at:
https://astro.ucsd.edu/grad/admissions/index.html , Note that the deadline is usually around December each year.
Good luck – I understand that applying for PhDs is very stressful.
Best,
Floor Broekgaarden
