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 3 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 my university.
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.
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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