SpaceVision 26
SpaceVision Speaker
Vasily Kokorev
Hubble Fellow
University of Texas at Austin
Vasily Kokorev is an astrophysicist studying how the first galaxies and black holes formed in the early Universe. He currently holds a NASA Hubble Fellowship at the Cosmic Frontier Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where he uses deep JWST imaging and spectroscopy to investigate the physical conditions of galaxies within the first billion years after the Big Bang.
His research focuses on the earliest phases of galaxy evolution and the rapid assembly of supermassive black holes. In particular, he studies a newly discovered population of compact sources in JWST surveys known as “Little Red Dots,” whose unusual spectral features suggest rapidly accreting black holes embedded within extremely dense gas. Using deep JWST/NIRSpec spectroscopy, he investigates the emission-line physics and radiative transfer in these systems, linking observed spectral signatures to the structure of the dense gas surrounding growing black holes.
Beyond accreting black holes, Vasily studies the growing population of high-redshift galaxies revealed by JWST, probing their stellar populations, ionized gas conditions, and star-formation histories. This work provides a broader framework for understanding how galaxies assembled and how rapidly growing black holes emerged within them during the first billion years of cosmic time.