Prof. Dr. Mark Jeffrey Henriksen is an Associate Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. His degrees include a Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Maryland and a B.Sc. in physics from UCLA. He completed his dissertation at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. His employment outside of academia includes 4 post-doctoral years at the Space Telescope Science Institute and 1.5 pre-doctoral years at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. His research interests include high-energy studies of large-scale structures and of the gas, galaxies, and dark matter within them. His awards include a National Science Foundation Early Career Award and the NASA Group Achievement Award for the Hubble Space Telescope. He is a member of the American Physical Society, the Astrophysics Division, and the International Astronomical Union.

Layla Ahmed received her B.Sc. in Physics and BA in Cultural Anthropology from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 2023, and is now pursuing a PhD in Physics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include improving upper division physics curricula for college students and implementing more code-based learning into physics classrooms.