Michael McDonald
Asst. Professor @ MIT
Contact Info
Office:
MIT Kavli Institute
Room 37-664B
70 Vassar Street
Cambridge, MA 02139
Phone:
(617) 324-1075
Email:
mcdonald "at" space.mit.edu
Welcome!
Michael McDonald is an Associate Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. He obtained his BScH and MSc degrees in Physics at Queen's University in Canada, and his PhD in Astronomy at the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. Michael spent three years as a Hubble Fellow at MIT, before being hired as an Assistant Professor in July 2015.
His research focuses on the co-evolution of massive galaxies and their super-massive black holes in the rich cluster environment. This research involves the discovery and study of the most distant assemblies of galaxies alongside detailed analyses of the complex interplay between gas, galaxies, and blackholes in the closest, most massive systems. He uses of a wide variety of ground- and space-based observatories, including (but not limited to) the Hubble and Chandra space telescopes, and the Magellan and ALMA telescopes located in Chile. For more information on this research program, see here.
Michael was closely involved with the development of the Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter on the Magellan Baade telescope, and is a member of the South Pole Telescope and the Athena, Lynx, STAR-X, and STROBE-X collaborations, as well as the National Academy of Sciences Entertainment Exchange.