My name is Emilia Järvelä and I am an assistant professor of physics and astronomy at Texas Tech University (TTU, Lubbock, TX, US). For those of you wondering how to pronounce my last name, you can check it out here. 

 

I am interested in supermassive black holes residing in the centres of (almost all) galaxies. Especially the kind that are actively accreting matter via an accretion disk, also known as active galactic nuclei.

 

My research focuses on a class of active galactic nuclei known as narrow-line Seyfert 1 galaxies. These sources host lightweight supermassive black holes, with masses of less than a hundred million solar masses. These black holes are the rebellious teenagers of the active galactic nuclei family and are going through a growth spurt, accreting mass very rapidly. You can read more about my research here.

 

If Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole in the centre of our Galaxy,

were active, it would be a narrow-line Seyfert 1!