Tereasa Brainerd

Professor Tereasa Brainerd is a professor of astronomy in the College of Arts and Sciences at Boston University. Brainerd earned her PhD in Astronomy from The Ohio State University in 1992. Her dissertation work centered on numerical simulations of the formation of structure in a Cold Dark Matter Universe. Prior to joining the faculty of Boston University in 1995, she held postdoctoral positions at the California Institute of Technology and Los Alamos National Laboratory. Professor Brainerd served as the Director of the Institute for Astrophysical research for six years, and as the Chair of the Department of Astronomy for six years. She also served a three-year term (2018-2021) as the first Trustee-at-Large of the American Astronomical Society.

Professor Brainerd is best known for her work on weak galaxy-galaxy lensing, the anisotropic distribution of satellite galaxies around their host galaxies, the intrinsic clustering of distant galaxies, and the intrinsic alignments of satellite galaxies with their host galaxies. Professor Brainerd’s current research includes studies of the spatial and velocity distributions of satellite galaxies and comparisons of observed properties of galaxies to the properties of galaxies in large simulations.

Research Interests:   Satellite galaxies as probes of dark matter halos, weak gravitational lensing, intrinsic alignments of galaxies, galaxy clustering, and numerical simulations of structure formation.

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