Tobin Wainer

Intro

Hello! I am Tobin Wainer. I graduated from the University of Washignton in Auguest of 2026 with a PhD. Astronomy. I have a broad range of research interestests, primarily focuses on star formation. Please check out the research tab to see more.

Research

For a complete list of my Publications, click here .

Star clusters are fundamental laboratories for astrophysics. Most stars form in clustered environments. My research uses these stellar clusters as laboratories to uncover the physics of star formation, combining resolved-star observations, high-resolution simulations, and time-domain studies to test the underlying physics of how stars form.

Star Clusters in M33

Our main goal was to construct a catalog of Star Clusters in the Triangulum Galaxy(M33) using data from the Hubble Space Telescope. We used the Citizen Science platform hosted by zooniverse.org to conduct a visual search for star clusters. Because star clusters are a key tool to studying star formation at different epochs, this catalog will be the basis of gaining usefull information about one of our nearest galactic neighbors.

This star cluster catalog was the basis for my next project, measuring and analysing the star cluster mass function of M33. The star cluster mass function provides valuable insights into how large star cluster can be in a galaxy, which we found to be consistent with the local star forming rates. In addition, we analyzed how impactful individual star cluster mass uncertainties are in measuring the cluster mass function.

Simulating Star Formation

Observationally, distinguishing between long-lived, gravitationally bound clusters and unbound stellar associations is notoriously difficult. To address these questions, using the STARFORGE simulations (Grudic et al. 2021), I have analyzed the embedded stage of formation, showing that embedded timescales are fundamentally tied to timing of massive star formation, with gas clearance scaling with cloud mass. I have also made mock observations of the simulations for at wavelengths never before looked at.

Tracing Star Formation
Over Millions of Years
in M31

Using HST data from the PHAST survery (Chen et al. 2025), I measured the resent star formation history of M31 from resolved stars. By combining the PHAST and PHAT surveys, we have access to photometry from 0.2 billion stars across two thirds of M31's disk, offering the first wholistic picture of the star formation in our nearest neighbor from homogeneous data. We found evidence of a large decline in M31's SFR over the last 500 Myr, which we interpret to be the late stages of a decline that has lasted several Gyr since a large burst around 2 to 4 Gyr ago (Williams et al, 2015; 2017). Additionally, because the star formation is occurring primarily in the ringed morphology of the galaxy, we are seeing a reduction in the rings themselves, offering clues to how long ringed structures can last. These results provide a stringent test of galaxy evolution models, which must simultaneously reproduce the diverse observational constraints on the formation and evolution of an L* galaxy.

CV

To open my CV, please click Here.

Personal

I grew up in Moab, Utah, and fostered an avid love for the outdoors. Ouside of work, I love backpacking, skiing, mountaineering, and climbing. I am also an avid sports fan, following the Denver Broncos, Utah Jazz, and Colorado Rockies.

Contact

You can reach me by email at: tobinw [at] uw.edu

Also, here is a link to my Linkedin and github profiles.

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