Hi, I'm Katya Leidig :)
I'm a NSF Graduate Reseach Fellow and PhD Candidate in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Maryland, where I am part of the research group Turtles All the Way Down.
I work with cosmological simulations to understand the connection between dark matter halos and the galaxies that live in them. I also enjoy running teaching and outreach programs in the local community.
I study what parts of galaxy clusters can reveal the properties of their underlying dark matter halos. Recently, I modeled the diffuse, low-surface-brightness stellar outskirts of brightest cluster galaxies (BCGs) using cosmological simulations and realistic mock-observing pipelines. By measuring āoutskirt stellar massā and full stellar mass density profiles, I developed new ways to use BCG stellar halos as precise tracers of halo mass. This model fits into the broader goal of building a multi-tracer framework that connects what we observeāstars, satellites, and hot gasāto the evolution of galaxy clusters and the dark matter that shapes them.