Mckenzie Ferrari

Hi! I'm Mckenzie. 👋

I'm a first-year graduate student at the University of Chicago pursuing a Ph.D. in Astrophysics. I attended undergrad at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, where I majored in physics with a minor in philosophy.

My theoretical and computational work over the past 4 years seeks to elucidate the nature of white dwarf progenitors of type Ia supernovae using multi-dimensional hydrodynamical simulations.

In March 2022, I was named a Barry Goldwater Scholar, the first awardee ever at UMass Dartmouth.

In the summer of 2022, I was an Astrophysics REU Intern at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, working on developing a mass-temperature relation of hot, eclipsing stars.

Research Experience

Near-Chandrasekhar Mass WD

This work shows that white dwarf (WD) mergers from binary white dwarfs (the double-degenerate channel) produce highly magnetized, uniformly rotating WDs. The resulting signatures of our MHD simulations of a near-Chandrasekhar mass WD with a hot envelope highly correspond to current observational evidence.

I've presented this work at six international and national conferences, including Posters on the Hill---an event in which only about 60 undergraduates are selected for each year.

Check out my undergraduate research Astrobites post about this work here!

Super-Chandrasekhar Mass WD

There exist a unique subclass of type Ia supernovae that are more luminous than "normal" SNe Ia. It's believed that these events result from the explosion of a super-Chandrasekhar mass WD. This ongoing work seeks to recreate the observable signatures of a super-Chandrasekhar mass WD explosion. These signatures, including synthetic optical spectra, will be compared to previously observed SN Ia events.

CV/Resume:

Here's an updated CV (as of Nov 2024):

click here!

mferrari-cv-nov2024.pdf

Synthetic Spectroscopy of SNe Ia

The video to the left is an 8-min talk for the MassURC conference about my near-Chandrasekhar mass WD project.

3-Minute Thesis

During my senior year at UMass Dartmouth, I competed in (and won 1st-place for undergrads) the 3-Minute Thesis competition. I talk about the work I did at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics the previous summer. The embedded webpage to the right contains a video with a recording of my talk from the competition.

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