My name is Vaishnav (Vai) Rao. I'm a PhD candidate in Astronomy at the University of Michigan, where I work with Prof. Eric Bell.
I'm passionate about understanding how galaxies form and evolve. I'm particularly interested in their stellar halos—the extended, faint regions of stars that surround galaxies. These halos act as fossil records of a galaxy’s past, preserving clues about its merger history through the presence of stellar streams, disrupted satellites, and globular clusters. In some cases, halos even contain populations of young stars that formed in the halo itself. These young stars provide insight into the history of feedback processes that influence star formation on galactic scales.
My research centers on the M81 Galaxy Group, a nearby trio of interacting galaxies—M81, M82, and NGC 3077—that provides a dynamic laboratory for studying how galaxy interactions shape evolution. Much of my recent work focuses on M82, a classic example of a starburst galaxy. I'm investigating how powerful galactic outflows—driven by intense star formation—can influence the surrounding halo and trigger new generations of stars. I do this by building detailed star formation histories from images taken with the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, which allow me to resolve individual stars in the halo of M82.
I'm also passionate about hunting for ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs) in the M81 Group. These tiny, ancient systems are some of the most dark matter-dominated galaxies known and provide critical insight into the small-scale structure of the universe.
