I am a Postdoctoral Researcher in Astrophysics at University of Oxford. The main focus of my research is to study the formation and evolution of the very first stars and supermassive black holes in distant galaxies using James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), Hubble Space Telescope (HST), other ground and space-based facilities, and cosmological simulations.
I am a key member of the JWST Advanced Deep Extragalactic Survey (JADES), which is a collaboration between the NIRCam and NIRSpec instrument science teams with guaranteed observing time on JWST. Our collaboration has now collected thousands of spectra of galaxies at high redshifts, with acoompanying exquisite imaging data that also covers the famous Hubble Ultra Deep Field. An interactive viewer showing all of the data that our collaboration has collected and analyzed to date can be found here. I am also involved with the NIRSpec WIDE survey, which is targeting relatively brighter galaxies across larger areas on the sky.
Within JADES, I am leading studies of early galaxy evolution and cosmic reionization by using spectroscopy to gain insights into the massive star populations within early galaxies, and understand the production and escape of ionizing photons from very early Lyman-alpha galaxies that drove reionization, such as the one shown below (Saxena et al. 2023).
I am also PI of a Cycle 1 JWST observing program called "The role of radio AGN feedback in massive galaxies at z = 4" with an international team, which has obtained exquisite spectrophotometric data for two specatcular radio galaxies at a redshift of ~4, which host active supermassive black holes that are interacting with their host galaxies. By studying the strength and spatial morphology of emission lines from these galaxies (such as shown below, Saxena et al. 2024), we will constrain the role of actively growing SMBHs on their host galaxies and how they regulates the growth and evolution of some of the most massive galaxies across the Universe.
Furthermore, I am PI of approved HST, ALMA and VLT observing programs targeting very distant galaxies, and I am involved with the next-generation cosmological simulation called MEGATRON, which has been awarded ~50 million hours on Dirac and will aim to carry out some of the most realistic galaxy simulations ever to complement the exquisite datasets from JWST.
Previously, I have held postdoctoral research fellowships at University College London (where I am currently a visiting fellow) and the Astronomical Observatory of Rome. I obtained my PhD from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands in 2019. I have been a member of the VANDELS survey and the LACES collaboration.
I am a passionate science communicator with years of experience giving public lectures, talking to amateur astronomy societies, setting up interactive activities and workshops suitable for all age groups, organizing multimedia exhibitions combining art, cinema and science, as well as giving interviews and consulting with major newspapers and magazines around the world.
In my spare time I enjoy playing football and tennis, watching all kinds of sports, gaming, listening to alternative/independent bands, cycling and bike maintenance, experimenting with coffee brewing techniques and travelling.