Kayhan Gültekin

I’m an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan.

I study black holes with a focus on pairs (bound and unbound) of supermassive black holes, their accretion properties, and gravitational wave signals from them.

About My Research

Kayhan Gültekin

I’m an assistant professor of astronomy at the University of Michigan.

I teach a number of different courses at the undergraduate non-major and undergraduate major level. If you are taking one of my classes get more information from the UM Canvas site.

Contact Info
Illustration of pulsar with text reading "NANOGrav Physics Frontiers Center" at the top and "2024 Fall Meeting Ann Arbor, Michigan" at the bottom

NANOGrav 2024 Fall Meeting

This week has been NANOGrav week at U-M! We are hosted the NANOGrav 2024 Fall Collaboration Meeting at Palmer Commons. This week’s Astronomy Colloquium will be given by Joe Simon (U. Colorado) talking about the astrophysics of gravitational wave background. Monday’s High Energy / Astrophysics Seminar in the Physics Department was given by Jeff Hazboun (Oregon St. U.) talking about pulsar timing […]

Office nameplate that says "Kayhan Gultekin, Associate Professor"

Promoted with Tenure!

I am thrilled to share that I have been promoted to Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Michigan! Thank you to my colleagues, mentors, students, and everyone who has supported me on this journey. I look forward to continuing my research and teaching in this new role.

A group of around 40 people standing at the front of a lecture hall.

COMO 2024

Three of us (Cayenne Matt, CJ Harris, and I) attended Compact Objects in Michigan and Ontario 2024. This year it was hosted by Henry Ford College. Cayenne and CJ gave talks on their most recent research.

screenshot of zoom presentation of dissertation defense. Left-hand panel shows powerpoint slide with amazing M-sigma plot. Right-hand panel shows room where defense is happening.

An alumna graduates!

A huge congratulations to former undergraduate group member Dr. Erica Hammerstein, who successfully defended her dissertation, titled “Population Studies of Tidal Disruption Events and Their Hosts: Understanding Host Galaxy Preferences and the Origin of the Ultraviolet and Optical Emission”. The NANOGrav results keep on coming out! The following papers were officially published in the past […]

Artist’s interpretation of an array of pulsars being affected by gravitational ripples produced by a supermassive black hole binary in a distant galaxy. Credit: Aurore Simonnet for the NANOGrav Collaboration

So much has happened!

It has been over a year since posting a news item, but it has been a busy year. I will do bullet points of the most important stuff that has happened. The evidence for gravitational wave background is huge news. It was a huge effort to get there from a team I have loved being […]