I am graduate student in the Department of Astronomy at Yale University working with Professor Pieter van Dokkum.  The core of my thesis work involved reducing the data for the NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey (NMBS) and generating photometric K-band selected catalogs.  I am interested in using the accurate photometric redshifts and stellar population parameters of this survey to study the evolution of the properties of the most massive galaxies from the early Universe to today.

Recent Publications

A Large Population of Compact Post-Starburst Galaxies at z>1: Implications for the Size Evolution and Quenching Mechanism of Quiescent Galaxies 

Whitaker, K.E., Kriek, M., van Dokkum, P.G., Bezanson, R., Brammer, G., Franx, M., Labbé, I. 2012, ApJ, 745,179

The NEWFIRM Medium-Band Survey: Photometric Catalogs, Redshifts and the Bimodal Color Distribution of Galaxies out to z~3

Whitaker, K.E., Labbé, I., van Dokkum, P.G., Brammer, G., Kriek, M., Marchesini, D., Quadri, R.F., Muzzin, A., Williams, R., Bezanson, R., Illingworth, G.D., Lee, K.-S., Lundgren, B., Nelson, E., Rudnick, G., Tal, T., Wake, D.A. 2011, ApJ, 735, 86