I'm Marko Ristić, an ISTI postdoctoral research fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. I'm a theoretical astrophysicist whose research focuses on the collisions of neutron stars and the material they eject. By studying the light emitted as a result of these mergers and comparing to our theoretical models, we can learn about the detailed microphysics in these environments affecting the light we observe. My work helps us better understand how the heaviest elements in the Universe were created and how matter behaves at extreme temperatures and densities. Read more about my research here!

I am also a huge proponent of introducing students to the world of research as early as high school. Much of my mentoring involves creating introductory astrophysics research resources for high-school students, particularly those who belong to historically marginalized communities. I have also mentored undergraduate students on generating surrogate modeling techniques for kilonova inference. Check out my most recent student's paper on kilonova inference using neural networks here, and my most recent high-school students' research presentations here and here!