Joanna Bridge is a sixth-year PhD candidate at Pennsylvania State University in University Park, Pennsylvania. She studies galaxy evolution using emission lines to study properties such as star formation rate, mass, metallicity, and dust geometry. Using Hubble Space Telescope (HST) spectroscopic data, Joanna is particularly interested in tracing the evolution of emission lines across cosmic time, from nearby galaxies to the very first galaxies that formed in the universe.
Joanna received her B.S. in Engineering Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. In addition to studying physics, she also acquired minors in both Astronomy and Classical Civilizations, interests that are connected through the history of astronomy and Greco-Roman mythology. As a graduate student, she was the recipient of a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship and a NASA Pennsylvania Space Grant Fellowship. She spent last year pursuing her research at Stockholm University in Stockholm, Sweden as an NSF Graduate Research Opportunities Worldwide (GROW) Fellow. Outside of research, Joanna is a member of the Astrobites (link here to http://www.astrobites.org) team, distilling current astronomical research papers and writing summaries to share astronomy with a wider audience. In her free time, Joanna likes to read and do karaoke.