CAREER: Galaxy Evolution Over Half of Cosmic History

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Dr. Coil will carry out three complementary research projects to tackle several key outstanding questions in galaxy evolution. Her goal is to uncover the physical processes behind the dramatic evolution observed in galaxies and AGN in the latter half of cosmic history, focusing specifically on the build-up of stellar mass in galaxies, the role of environment on AGN accretion, and the prevalence and importance of outflowing galactic winds. Her work will primarily use data from the PRIsm MUlti-object Survey (PRIMUS), the largest faint galaxy spectroscopic redshift survey taken to date, of which she is a co-I. She and her team will lead projects to measure the evolution in the galaxy stellar mass function, the clustering properties of AGN, and study the physical properties of outflowing galactic winds in distant galaxies.The broader impacts of this proposal range from increasing student enrollment in the general astrophysics survey course at UCSD to increasing the representation of women in physics at UCSD and beyond. Dr. Coil has created a multi-tiered approach targeting women at several levels in the academic pipeline, focusing on middle school and graduate students, as well as postdoctoral researchers. She will expand the Women in Physics group she recently created at UCSD to use mentoring to both support and enhance the experiences of current graduate student and postdoctoral women in the physics department, as well as to recruit more women to the program. She will also engage female graduate students in outreach aimed at middle school girls, through the use of hands-on physics demos. This proposal will also train and mentor graduate students and a postdoctoral scholar in the research activities described above.