Chair and Professor
School of Physics
As an expert in astrophysics, Feryal Özel is equipped to offer thoughts on everything from black holes in the Milky Way to the exploration of the moon.
Born and raised in Istanbul, Turkey, Feryal Özel received her B.S. in physics and applied mathematics at Columbia University and her Ph.D. at Harvard University. Özel is a founding member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, where she has led the Modeling and Analysis Group. When Özel was working on her dissertation as a graduate student at Harvard, she “fell in love” with black holes and she often wondered if we could actually glimpse a black hole directly — and decided to take on the challenge. In May 2022, fueled by her passion and curiosity, she led EHT’s unveiling of the first image of the supermassive black hole located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy — Sagittarius A* — Sgr A*.
In this episode of the Talk Nerdy podcast, host Cara Santa Maria is joined by Feryal Özel, professor and chair of the School of Physics. They talk about her incredible career as a theoretical astrophysicist, her important work on the recent imaging of a black hole with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, and the critical need for representation in science.
NBC News
Sagittarius A* is completely dark, but the photo captured a glowing ring around a cloaked center — what astronomers identified as the black hole's telltale shadow, said Feryal Özel.
https://www.nbcnews.com/science/space/black-hole-center-milky-way-pictured-firs…
The New York Times
Dr. Özel is part of the Event Horizon Telescope project, a collaboration of more than 300 scientists from 13 institutions that operates an ever-growing global network of telescopes that compose one large telescope as big as Earth. The team’s results were published Thursday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/12/science/black-hole-photo.html
YouTube
Feryal ledthe Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration's unveiling of the first image of the supermassive black hole located at the center of our Milky Way galaxy — Sagittarius A* — Sgr A*.