Andrew Chael: Difference between revisions

Andrew Alan Chael is an American theoretical astrophysicist who studies the plasma physics, accretion disks, and relativistic jets in the immediate environments of supermassive black holes. He is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration and has held postdoctoral fellowships including a NASA Hubble Fellowship (Einstein Fellow); he is affiliated with Princeton University’s Gravity Initiative and the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science.^[1][2][3]

Chael grew up in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Physics (with a secondary concentration in Medieval Studies) from Carleton College in 2013, and earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University in 2019. At Harvard he worked with advisors including Ramesh Narayan, Shep Doeleman, and Michael Johnson.^[1][3]

Chael is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) collaboration, a global network of radio observatories that produced the first image of a black hole in the galaxy M87 in 2019. Within the EHT project, he has contributed to the development of imaging algorithms, theoretical modeling, and interpretation of the resulting data. His work helped establish frameworks for connecting simulations of accretion disks and relativistic jets with the observed black hole shadows and polarization structures.^[2][3]

Chael’s work focuses on understanding accretion processes and jet formation around supermassive black holes. His publications often address general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics (GRMHD), polarized radiative transfer, and synthetic imaging. He investigates how magnetically arrested disks (MADs), black hole spin, and magnetic flux accumulation influence jet power and variability. Chael’s research combines analytic theory and large-scale numerical simulations to model the behavior of magnetized plasma near black-hole event horizons and to predict observational signatures (images, spectra, and variability) from accreting supermassive black holes such as Sgr A* and M87. He develops computational imaging and modeling methods to connect simulations with multi-wavelength observations produced by instruments including the Event Horizon Telescope.^[1][2]

He has co-authored papers published by the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, including results on black hole imaging, polarization, and time-variability analyses. His independent work also includes theoretical modeling of relativistic plasma flows, synthetic EHT observables, and advanced computational techniques for connecting simulations.^[4][5][6]

He has served as a NASA Hubble Fellowship Program (NHFP) Einstein Fellow and as a John A. Wheeler Postdoctoral Fellow (2019–2022) and has held postdoctoral and research scholar positions within Princeton’s Gravity Initiative and the Princeton Center for Theoretical Science.^[2][3]