Home
I am an observer
broadly interested in using dwarf galaxies to constrain the physical processes that underpin
galaxy evolution.
Galaxies are versatile if immutable laboratories; they are simultaneously tracers of larger scale
cosmological processes and the laboratories in which smaller scale astrophysics proceeds.
Given that we are not able to create either universes nor stars in the lab, my work focuses on
how to best use the cosmic laboratories at our disposal to understand the physical processes that shape them.
My main interest is in the low-mass galaxy regime, where I think about how
dwarf galaxies can inform our understanding of physics at both larger and smaller scales.
I have a particular interest in the relationship between the star formation cycle and
the dwarf population as a way to understand both the physics of star formation regulation and
the creation of the galaxy population.
I am currently a YCAA prize fellow at the Yale Center for Astronomy and Astrophysics;
I got my PhD from Princeton in 2022, and in 2025 I will become a Kavli fellow
at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford.
My full CV can be found here.
Contact
You can find me at Kline Tower in Office 433, or virtually at erin.kado-fong at yale dot edu.
I can also be found on Github and on twitter as
@erin_kadofong.
Last Updated:
About Me
I grew up in Davis, CA, a small-ish town in the valley of California. Unlike most small towns in the middle
of farmland, there is a decent chance that you (likely an academic) know of my hometown
as the location of UC Davis.
I decamped to the East Coast in 2013 to get my bachelor's at Tufts University, where I was advised by
Danilo Marchesini. In 2017, I moved down
to Princeton for graduate school; my advisor was Jenny Greene.
In 2022 we moved north to Connecticut when I became a YCAA fellow at Yale -- in 2025, I'll
head back to California as a Kavli fellow at KIPAC.
Data and Catalogs
If you're interested in catalog data associated with a project of mine that isn't listed below, feel free to shoot me an email.
The Merian Survey
I am a Co-I on the Merian Survey, a DECam survey of 100,000 star-forming dwarfs at 0.05<z<0.1. Merian will provide the first mass-complete sample of star-forming dwarfs down to stellar masses of 108 solar masses over more than 800 sq.
degrees on the sky with broadband imaging from the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program (HSC-SSP).
Survey website: here
The SAGA Survey
I work with the Satellites Around Galactic Analogs (SAGA) Survey team to learn about star formation regulation in low-mass galaxies. The SAGA survey is a spectroscopic survey of satellites around 101 nearby MW-like hosts. My interest within the survey actually relates mostly to the spectroscopic targets that were found to not be related to the SAGA hosts. These SAGAbg (SAGA background) galaxies tend to be low-mass and star-forming; the depth and selection of the SAGA survey sheds new light on the low-mass galaxy population even beyond their main sample.
The SAGA survey recently had its third data release! Check out the eposters for SAGA Papers III, IV, and V here!
Survey website: here
NASA ADS link for Paper I of the SAGAbg series: Kado-Fong et al. 2024
Dwarf-Dwarf Mergers in HSC-SSP
A catalog of major mergers between dwarf galaxies at z<0.15 in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program.
NASA ADS link for the associated paper: Kado-Fong et al. 2020
Associated Catalog: the VizieR Catalog Link can be found here
Tidal Features in HSC-SSP
A catalog of galaxies that host tidal features at z<0.45 in the Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program, along with the morphological classification (shell/stream) of their tidal features.
NASA ADS link for the associated paper: Kado-Fong et al. 2018
Associated Catalog: the catalog can be found as CSV here
Multi-wavelength catalogs of the Hubble Frontier Fields
UV-IR catalogs of HFF galaxies with photometry, photometric redshifts, best-fit stellar population properties,
and lensing magnification factors
NASA ADS link for the associated paper: Shipley et al. 2018
Associated Catalog: available at HFFDeepSpace
Rotation Periods for a Sample of M-Dwarfs in PS1-MDS
Here's a throwback: from my very first paper, a sample of rotating M-dwarfs in the PanSTARRS Medium-Deep Survey.
NASA ADS link for the associated paper: Kado-Fong et al. 2016
Associated Catalog: the VizieR Catalog Link can be found here
Research
Here is my CV, last updated 2023/03. While I work on a dedicated page for ongoing research, here's my ADS record.
If you prefer ORCIDs, mine is 0000-0002-0332-177X.