About Me
Michael McDonald is an Associate Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology’s Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research. He obtained a BScH in 2005 and a MSc in 2007 from Queen’s University in Canada working with Prof. Stéphane Courteau. He received an Astronomy PhD in 2011 from the University of Maryland working with Prof. Sylvain Veilleux. Michael was a postdoctoral associate in the Chandra ACIS group with Dr. Marshall Bautz for one year at MIT before winning a Hubble Fellowship at MIT from 2012-2015. He was hired by MIT as an Assistant Professor in 2015 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2020.
Michael’s research focuses on the co-evolution of massive galaxies and their super-massive black holes in the rich cluster environment. This research involves the discovery and study of the most distant assemblies of galaxies alongside detailed analyses of the complex interplay between gas, galaxies, and blackholes in the closest, most massive systems. He uses of a wide variety of ground- and space-based observatories, including (but not limited to) the Hubble, Chandra, and James Webb space telescopes, and the Magellan and ALMA telescopes located in Chile. For more information on this research program, see here.
Michael is a heavy Magellan user and was closely involved with the development of the Maryland-Magellan Tunable Filter on the Magellan Baade telescope, and is a member of the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and SPT-3G collaborations. He has been involved with a variety of X-ray mission concepts, including Lynx, STAR-X, STROBE-X, Arcus, and AXIS.