Astronomy grad Maryam Hussaini finalist for Harvard Three-Minute Thesis

Congratulations to Astronomy grad Maryam Hussaini for making the finals of the Harvard Three Minute Thesis (3MT®)--a competition for master's and doctoral students to develop and showcase their research communication skills in a language appropriate to a non-specialist audience. Her talk was presented on March 5, 2026.

Maryam's talk was "Where is the matter?"  She used Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) as probes to try and answer the missing baryon problem. As FRBs pass through space, they are slowed down proportional to the amount of matter they passed through. By measuring that delay for FRBs that passed through the space between galaxies, she discovered there is a lot more diffuse matter in the Intergalactic Medium (between galaxies) than we expected, and that’s where we think the missing baryons are.