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 an Assistant Professor of Physics at Adelphi University. Before that, I was a Future Faculty Postdoctoral Fellow at Northeastern University. I completed my PhD in August 2024 at Boston University.

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 the internal and external mechanisms that quench star formation in galaxies. My current research focus is the circumgalactic medium – the diffuse gas and dust that surrounds many large galaxies.

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.

I earned my PhD in Astronomy in August 2024 from Boston University, where my advisor was Professor Tereasa Brainerd. My dissertation research used data from IllustrisTNG, a set of cosmological, magnetohydrodynamic simulations of galaxy formation and evolution. I have published work regarding the distribution of satellite galaxies and dark matter and investigating star formation on kiloparsec-scales in simulated central and satellite galaxies.

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. I was invited give a talk at the 2024 AAPT Winter Meeting in New Orleans on an article I published with Prof. Paul Withers in the American Journal of Physics: The Discovery of a Supermassive Black Hole at the Center of the Milky Way Galaxy.

Background Image Credit: Illustris Simulation

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