Welcome!

My name is Devin Becker and I am an undergraduate at DePaul University pursuing a double major in astrophysics and pure mathematics with a minor in art (the background image for this webpage is Vincent Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhône, one of my favorite paintings depictng stars). From a young age, I have revelled in mathematics and its beauty. With math, there is always an answer, or a reasonable explanation for the lack thereof. As I continued my study of mathematics, these answers started to come together and gather physical meaning. This is where I was introduced to the lovely and often ludicrous world of physics!

At Northwestern, I study black hole formation in globular clusters using Monte-Carlo n-body simulations. I am particularly interested in the effects of stellar collisions on heavy black hole formation. More information on this work can be found under the "Forming Heavy Black Holes in Globular Clusters" tab above.

I also do research in physical cosmology at my home institution, DePaul University. Here I study hierarchical structure formation in the Lyman-alpha forest regime of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey as a means of piecing together the formation of the universe. More information on this work, as well as a link to the paper I wrote on this project can be found under the "Cosmology Research" tab above.