Alyssa D. Sokol
Ph.D., Astrophysics
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Welcome! My name is Alyssa Sokol and I received my PhD from UMass Amherst in 2022 with Dr. Min Yun as my dissertation advisor.
My research focuses on understanding the nature of co-evolution between galaxies and their central supermassive black holes across cosmic time using multi-wavelength observations (Sokol et al. 2023) While my PhD thesis focused on high redshift galaxies and AGN, at large I'm also interested the many scales of star formation astrophysics that make up our fractal, hierarchical, and fundamentally connected universe! In my graduate career I've also researched star clusters in local dwarf galaxies, investigating the universal nature of star formation in unique low-density environments. Prior to nearby galaxy research I worked on the clustering properties of pre-stellar cores in the MonocerosR2 molecular cloud using data from the Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT) in Mexico (Sokol et al. 2019).
Since finishing my PhD, I am keen on expanding my research into understanding how quantum physics, consciousness, and astrophysics work together to explain our universe and existence. To this day, 95% of the universe largely remains a mystery! Perhaps it is time we transcend our third-dimensional plane and linear thinking by seeking these answers in higher dimensions, welcoming thoughts about the non-physical and that which is currently imperceivable. After all, time is an illusion!