I joined the Theoretical Astrophysics and Cosmology Group in the Physics Department of the Ohio State University as a postdoctoral research associate in 2005. My prior education includes a Ph.D. (2005) from University of Wisconsin at Madison and a B.S. (2000) from Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.
My present research focuses on a wide variety of areas in Particle & Nuclear Astrophysics and Theoretical Astrophysics, and is strongly motivated by experimental and observational data. Here are some of my recent publications:
Apr 08 [Revealing the High-Redshift Star Formation Rate with Gamma-Ray Bursts]
While the high-z frontier of star formation rate (SFR) studies has advanced rapidly, direct measurements beyond z ~ 4 remain difficult, as shown by significant disagreements among different results. Gamma-ray bursts, owing to their brightness and as..
Mar 08 [Discovery of the Dust-Enshrouded Progenitor of SN 2008S with Spitzer]
We report the discovery of the progenitor of the recent type IIn SN 2008S in the nearby galaxy NGC 6946. Surprisingly, it was not found in deep, pre-explosion optical images of its host galaxy taken with the Large Binocular Telescope, but only throu..
Mar 08 [Conservative Constraints on Dark Matter Annihilation into Gamma Rays]
Using gamma-ray data from the Milky Way, Andromeda (M31), and the cosmic background, we calculate conservative upper limits on the dark matter self-annihilation cross section to monoenergetic gamma rays, _{\gamma \gamma}, over a wide range of dark m..
Feb 08 [A Survey About Nothing: Monitoring a Million Supergiants for Failed
Supernovae]
Extragalactic transient searches have historically been limited to looking for the appearance of new sources such as supernovae. It is now possible to carry out a new kind of survey that will do the opposite, that is, search for the disappearance of..
Nov 07 [Circumscribing Late Dark Matter Decays Model Independently]
A number of theories, spanning a wide range of mass scales, predict dark matter candidates that have lifetimes much longer than the age of the universe, yet may produce a significant flux of gamma rays in their decays today. We constrain such late d..