Sharon Lapiner
Postdoctoral Researcher, Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Racah Institute of Physics, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJI). I received my B.Sc. from the Open University of Israel and my Ph.D. from HUJI, where I studied galaxy evolution using cosmological simulations.
My current research focuses on fast radio bursts (FRBs) as probes of diffuse ionized gas in the cosmic web, including the sheets, filaments, and circumgalactic medium that contain the majority of baryons in the Universe. Using analytic methods, I model how FRB signals (scattering, scintillation, and dispersion measure) are shaped by foreground plasma, translating observables into testable predictions for forthcoming surveys. My future directions extend this framework to FRB gravitational lensing, structure formation physics across scales (from the cosmic web to star-forming filaments in molecular clouds), and the circumburst environments of FRB sources.
More broadly, I am drawn to problems at the boundary between regimes, using similar analytic tools to connect seemingly different systems, from the large-scale cosmic web to the immediate environments of FRB sources.