Victoria (Ashley) Villar In July 2021, Assistant Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics University Park, PA 16802 Phone: Fax: Email: vav2110@columbia.edu Personal webpage

I study the dramatic deaths of stars through collisions and explosions and how these events inform our understanding of the late-stages of stellar evolution. I primarily rely on broadband ultraviolet, optical and infrared light curves, paired with analytical models, to understand the physical engines and astrophysical progenitors of extragalactic transients.

My work is driven by two recent and upcoming revolutions in time-domain astrophysics:

First, a new survey known as the Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) will be online in several years. This survey will increase our discovery rate of extragalactic transients by two orders of magnitude to well over one million events each year. VRO will open the possibility for large scale, statistical studies of rare core-collapse supernovae, and it will allow us to search for the rarest (and perhaps unexpected) astrophysical phenomena. Optimizing the scientific return of VRO will require novel data-driven methodologies which can identify, classify and flag events in real time. I am particularly interested in discovering the rarest events — the unknown unknowns — which VRO will capture.

Second, gravitational wave detectors have opened the door for new multimessenger studies within time-domain astrophysics. I study the thermal electromagnetic radiation from binary neutron star mergers, known as kilonovae. These events are likely the primary site of nucleosynthesis for the heaviest (r-process) elements. I am especially interested in the late-time, near infrared light curves of kilonovae, which (due to being optically thin) allow us to peer deep into the merger ejecta and directly probe the newly synthesized material.