Julia Katharina Lamprecht

PhD Student Astrophysics

Research interests

  • The dynamics of early-type galaxies in order to constrain their formation and evolutionary history. Of particular interest are nucleated galaxies, as nuclear star clusters preserve information about their formation pathways imprinted into their stellar populations and dynamical structure
  • Using Schwarzschild orbit-superposition modelling (DYNAMITE), I build dynamical models of galaxies by optimizing large orbit libraries to reproduce integral-field spectroscopic and imaging observations (MUSE, SINFONI, NIFS, HST)
  • Extract stellar kinematics from integrated galaxy spectra using the Bayes-LOSVD framework, modelling the broadening and shifts of absorption-line features through Bayesian inference and Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling within a probabilistic machine learning framework
  • Black hole demographics: Measuring the mass of BHs (SMBHs, IMBHs) to investigate co-existence and co-evolution of the central black hole and its host galaxy
  • Data Science, scientific computing und statistical modelling

Visits and Talks

Traces of Galaxy Formation Group, La Laguna, Tenerife 11/2025

Talk on "Testing Bayes-LOSVD on nucleated early-type galaxies in the Fornax cluster."

Lorentz Center workshop: Galactic Centers as tracers of Galaxy Evolution, Leiden 10/2025

Talk on "An orbital decomposition of the nuclear regions in the early-type galaxy FCC047".

Bridging Scales Conference, Matera 09/2025

Flashtalk on "An orbital decomposition of an unusually large nuclear star cluster."

European Southern Observatory (ESO), Garching 2024 and 2025

01/2025 - 02/2025: Science internship program. 10/2024 - 11/2024: Research visit.

Stellar Dynamics Research Group, Vienna 05/2023

Talk on "Measuring the black hole mass of PGC1021091."

Education

Department of Astrophysics and Theoretical Physics, Masaryk University, Brno 07/2025 - now

PhD Student: Bridging Dynamics and Stellar Populations: Unravelling Nuclear Star Cluster Formation.

Department of Astrophysics, University of Vienna 2019 - 2025

BSc and MSc degrees. Focus: Evolution and formation of galaxies, Galactic dynamics, Dynamical modelling of galaxies, SMBH mass determination. Master's thesis: Orbital decomposition of the nuclear star cluster in FCC 047. Bachelor's thesis: Constraining the black hole mass of PGC1021091 with DYNAMITE.

Faculty of Economics, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich 2014 - 2018

BSc Economics.

Semester abroad at Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole, School of Economics (2016-2017).

Extracurricular Activities and Stipends

Performance Scholarship, University of Vienna 11/2025

Awarded for outstanding academic achievements.

Stellar Dynamics Research Group, University of Vienna 03/2023 - 06/2025
KWA (Short-term grant abroad) 10/2024 - 11/2024

Academic work abroad, working on the Master's thesis at ESO, Garching.

WST Symposium, Vienna 05/2023

Student support, Local Organizing Committee.

Nightingale Mentoring programme 10/2021 - 02/2022

Supporting children with migration background from socially disadvantaged families.

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