Directory

Monica Valluri

Associate Research Professor

email Monica Valluri

905 Dennison
500 Church St.
Ann Arbor, Mi 48109

Phone: (734) 764-3430
Department Phone: (734) 764-3440
Fax: (734) 763-6317

Research Interests

I am a Research Professor at the Department of Astronomy at the University of Michigan. My research is based on the theoretical framework of Galactic Dynamics. Some of the topics I currently work on include:

accurately measuring the masses of supermassive black holes in galaxies, their effects on their host galaxies, and their role in galaxy evolution;
the role of non-linear dynamical processes (e.g. chaos and dynamical relaxation) in sculpting galaxies;
the properties (such as space and velocity distribution) of the mysterious "dark matter" that constitutes most of the mass in the Universe;
understanding the dynamical structure of the Milky Way Galaxy from the properties of tidal streams, and the orbits of stars in the Milky Way's halo and thick disk;
predicting the observable properties of dark matter and the detectability of "dark stars" with future telescopes like JWST;
infering the dynamical effects of cluster environments on spiral galaxies from the distributions of their atomic hydrogen gas and stars.

Education

B.Sc./M.Sc. Birla Institute of Technology and Science Pilani, Rajasthan, India
Ph.D. Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India

Publications

All my publications are available from NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS).