Faculty Profiles

Alison Crocker is an astrophysicist whose research focuses on the physics of star formation in nearby galaxies. She works on connecting what we know about the gas in galaxies (the precursor to star formation) to what we know about the stars that actually form. Her most recent paper documents how the ultraviolet light from young stars interacts with their surroundings. Alison majored in physics and mathematics at Dartmouth College before attending the University of Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. She earned her DPhil in astrophysics from Oxford and completed two postdoctoral positions at the University of Massachusetts and the University of Toledo before joining the physics faculty at Reed in the fall of 2014. In addition to teaching an astrophysics course, Alison teaches courses across the physics major and runs a weekly open astronomy/astrophysics discussion group.

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