Rate My Professor Julia Kamenetzky

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.