Matt O’Dowd

• Program

  FutureLens

• Institution

  CUNY Lehman College

Matt O’Dowd is an Associate Professor at CUNY, Lehman College, and a Research
Associate at the American Museum of Natural History. He is a researcher in
extragalactic astrophysics, with Active Galactic Nuclei (AGNs) being a primary scientific
interest. His work with AGNs includes: computational modeling of their structure &
variability, employing them as cosmological probes, and understanding the AGN-galaxy
connection.
Prof. O’Dowd’s Ph.D. in Astrophysics (2004) was obtained jointly at the Space
Telescope Science Institute and University of Melbourne, where he studied the co-
evolution of active galactic nuclei and their host galaxies using the Hubble Space
Telescope. Following this, he served as Australia’s Deputy Gemini Scientist, facilitating
Australian scientists’ participation with the Gemini Observatory, and then as a
postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University, where he used the Spitzer Space Telescope
and GALEX to study the influence of AGNs on the interstellar medium. A significant
ongoing area of interest is in strong gravitational lensing, and especially the use of
microlensing to study the inner structure of strongly lensed quasars. Prof. O’Dowd’s
currently leads the Schmidt Futures-funded team FutureLens, which is developing a
machine learning modeling and analysis pipeline for strongly lensed quasars in
preparation for the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time.
Prof. O’Dowd is also a passionate science communicator. His most prominent work is
as host and writer of the YouTube show PBS Space Time. This long-running series has nearly 3 million subscribers, and explores a wide range of topics in physics and
astrophysics.