About

A color photograph of a person's head and shoulders. The person is facing the camera and looking directly at the viewer. They have long brown hair and are wearing a black dress with white constellations. The background is of a river with skyscrapers and other buildings behind it. The image is a portrait-style headshot, commonly used for professional purposes such as resumes, online profiles, or business cards.

Hello! My name is Bryanne McDonough and I am a sixth-year graduate student in the Department of Astronomy at Boston University. I will be completing my dissertation this summer and in August I will be joining Professor Jacqueline McCleary at Northeastern University as a Future Faculty Fellow.

A little about me: I was born and raised in western Massachusetts and then ventured out to Rochester, New York. At Rochester Institute of Technology I obtained my Bachelor’s degree cum laude in Physics with minors in Astronomy and Mathematics in May 2018. I was a member of the honors program and Sigma Pi Sigma, the physics honor society. In the spring of 2018, I was awarded the John Wiley Jones Award for Outstanding Students in Science and named a Physics Undergraduate Research Scholar.

My main research interests lie in computational astrophysics and what we can learn from comparing the results of cosmological simulations to observations. I am interested in galaxy evolution, particularly how star formation can be influenced by feedback and external factors.

Currently, I work with Professor Tereasa Brainerd with data from the IllustrisTNG Simulation, a large simulation of galaxy formation. My latest published results regard the distribution of satellite galaxies and dark matter. I am currently working on spatially-resolved star formation rates in an effort to constrain feedback models in the TNG simulation.

I am also very passionate about teaching astronomy and physics. I want to make science education accessible to everyone using research-backed methods. To do so, I use and advocate for Universal Design for Learning (UDL). In 2022, I served as a UDL consultant for BU’s Center for Teaching and Learning.

Background Image Credit: Illustris Simulation