Hollis B. Akins
Astronomy Ph.D. student at UT Austin
PMA 16.220
2515 Speedway
Austin, TX 78712
Welcome! I am a third-year Ph.D. student at the University of Texas at Austin working with Prof. Caitlin Casey on high-redshift galaxy evolution. In particular, I study the massive galaxies in the epoch of reionization, a period of major phase change in the first billion years of the universe. I focus in particular on the dust-obscured universe using major telescopes including JWST and ALMA, and I’m a member of the COSMOS-Web and CEERS collaborations.
I completed my Bachelors in Physics at Grinnell College in rural Iowa, surrounded by corn-fields and fueled by small-town coffee. While there I studied the evolution of the smallest galaxies in the local universe using hydrodynamic simulations as part of the N-Body Shop collaboration. I’ve also previously studied the color evolution of massive galaxies using the SIMBA cosmological simulations.
This page will be a home for updates about my research projects, publications, and growth as a scientist. Follow the links below to learn more.
news
selected publications
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COSMOS-Web: The over-abundance and physical nature of “little red dots”–Implications for early galaxy and SMBH assemblyarXiv e-prints, Jun 2024
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Two Massive, Compact, and Dust-obscured Candidate z ≃ 8 Galaxies Discovered by JWSTThe Astrophysical Journal, Oct 2023