Yael Alush

Lavine Family Fellow

Israeli University: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Columbia Affiliation: Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory

Faculty Host: Prof. Brian Metzger

Research Topic: Relativistic Dynamics of Extreme Mass Ratio Inspirals Around Spinning Black Holes

Yael Alush is a Kalaniyot Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics at Columbia University. She completed her PhD in Physics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as an Azrieli Fellow, under the supervision of Nicholas Stone. Her research focuses on massive black holes at the centers of galaxies and the dynamics of the star clusters that surround them. She studies two of the most extreme events in the Universe: tidal disruption events, in which a star is torn apart by the gravitational forces of a supermassive black hole, and extreme mass ratio inspirals, in which a compact object gradually spirals into a massive black hole while emitting gravitational waves. Her research addresses key uncertainties in theoretical models, contributing directly to tests of Einstein’s theory of general relativity and advances our understanding of the Universe.