Sarah Nickerson

Affiliation: Bay Area Environmental Research Institute

Email: sarah.nickerson@nasa.gov

Read Sarah Nickerson‘s interview

Professional Biography

Born and raised in Canada, Dr. Sarah Nickerson studied at the University of Toronto, completing her Bachelor of Science with a dual specialization in physics and astrophysics. 

Her graduate research centered on hydrodynamic, N-body codes designed for simulating galaxies in isolation, and cosmological contexts. At McMaster University she received her Master of Science, working with Professor Hugh Couchman on the missing satellites problem with the smoothed-particle hydrodynamics code Gasoline. Relocating to Switzerland, she earned her Doctor of Science (Doktorin der Naturwissenschaften) at the Institute for Computational Science of the University of Zürich. With Professor Romain Teyssier and Dr. Joakim Rosdahl, she modeled the non-equilibrium chemistry of interstellar molecular hydrogen coupled to moment-based radiative transfer for the adaptive mesh refinement code Ramses-RT.

Dr. Nickerson is now based in the United States as a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center associated with the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute. She presently focuses on molecular observations of the interstellar medium and is bringing computational methods to process astrophysical spectral data. Alongside her advisor Dr. Naseem Rangwala, she is building a molecular inventory of the Orion hot core with high-resolution spectra taken by the EXES instrument aboard SOFIA. These measurements are a unique opportunity to study molecular transitions in the nearest massive star-forming region that are only accessible in the mid-infrared.

Education

Ph.D. Astrophysics and Computation, University of Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland; thesis: Beauty Out of Darkness: a New Model for Molecular Hydrogen in Galaxy Simulations

M.Sc. Astrophysics, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada; thesis: Shedding Light on Dark Satellites

B.Sc. Physics and Astrophysics, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada

Research Interests

Astrochemistry

Molecular Astrophysics

The Interstellar Medium

Star-Forming Regions

Computational Astrophysics

Select Publications

Nickerson, Sarah; Rangwala, Naseem; Colgan, Sean W. J.; DeWitt, Curtis; Huang, Xinchuan; Acharyya, Kinsuk; Drozdovskaya, Maria; Fortenberry, Ryan C.; Herbst, Eric; Lee, Timothy J., 2021, The First Mid-infrared Detection of HNC in the Interstellar Medium: Probing the Extreme Environment toward the Orion Hot Core, The Astrophysical Journal, 907, 51

Nickerson, Sarah; Teyssier, Romain; Rosdahl, Joakim, Towards the complete census of molecular hydrogen in a simulated disc galaxy, 2019, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 484, 1238

Nickerson, Sarah; Teyssier, Romain; Rosdahl, Joakim, A simple model for         molecular hydrogen chemistry coupled to radiation hydrodynamics, 2018, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 479, 3206

Nickerson, S.; Stinson, G.; Couchman, H. M. P.; Bailin, J.; Wadsley, J., The luminosity function of diverse satellite galaxy systems, 2013, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 429, 452

Nickerson, S.; Stinson, G.; Couchman, H. M. P.; Bailin, J.; Wadsley, J., Mechanisms of baryon loss for dark satellites in cosmological smoothed particle hydrodynamics simulations, 2011, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 415, 257