Rate My Professor Julia Kamenetzky

Julia Kamenetzky is an Associate Professor of Physics and department chair at Westminster University in Salt Lake City, Utah, formerly Westminster College of Salt Lake City. She earned her Ph.D. and M.S. in Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences from the University of Colorado Boulder and her B.A. in Physics from Cornell College in Iowa. Prior to her appointment at Westminster starting in 2016, she served as an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Arizona. In her role, Kamenetzky utilizes research-supported active-learning strategies and standards-based grading to guide students toward success in scientific careers. She chairs the Physics department and contributes to institutional efforts in physics education.

Dr. Kamenetzky's doctoral and postdoctoral research examined molecular gas in star-forming galaxies using the Herschel SPIRE Fourier Transform Spectrometer, Atacama Large Millimeter Array, and Arizona Radio Observatory. At Westminster, a primarily undergraduate institution, she directs student research projects on light pollution, variable star monitoring, exoplanet transit monitoring, and physics/astronomy education research. She participated in the 2017 Citizen CATE experiment and the 2024 DEB Initiative to image the solar corona during total solar eclipses. Key publications include "Relations with CO rotational ladders of galaxies across the Herschel SPIRE archive" (The Astrophysical Journal, 2016), "Herschel-SPIRE imaging spectroscopy of molecular gas in M82" (The Astrophysical Journal, 2012), "Observations of Arp 220 using Herschel-SPIRE: An unprecedented view of the molecular gas in an extreme star formation environment" (The Astrophysical Journal, 2011), "A dust-obscured massive maximum-starburst galaxy at a redshift of 6.34" (Nature, 2013), and recent collaborations with students such as "An Estimate of the Distance to AN Ser using an RR Lyrae Period–Luminosity Relationship" (Research Notes of the AAS, 2023) and "A New Lecture-Tutorial for Teaching Interferometry to Astronomy Students" (The Physics Teacher, 2021). She holds the NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship and advocates for underrepresented groups in STEM while addressing intersections of science, society, and policy.