Draft:Lina Necib

• Comment: Assistant professors with only early career awards do not come close to qualifying for academic notability. Ldm1954 (talk) 21:40, 29 April 2025 (UTC)

---

Lina Necib is a Tunisian-American theoretical physicist specializing in astroparticle physics, dark matter, and galactic dynamics. She is an Assistant Professor of Physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and a researcher at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI).. Necib's research focuses on understanding the structure and dynamics of the Milky Way, with an emphasis on the role of dark matter. She’s known for her use of machine learning techniques in astrophysical research and for the discovery of the Nyx stellar stream, a vast prograde stellar stream in the solar vicinity, published in Nature Astronomy in 2020.

Biography

Lina Necib was born and raised in Tunisia. She completed her high school education in Tunisia before moving to the United States in 2008 to pursue higher education at Boston University. Necib earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and Physics from Boston University in 2012. She then continued her studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she obtained a Ph.D. in Physics in 2017

Lina then moved to California in 2017 where she was a Fairchild fellow at Caltech from 2017 to 2020, a Presidential Fellow at the University of California Irvine in 2020, and a Fellow in Theoretical Astrophysics at Carnegie Observations from 2020 to 2021. She joined MIT faculty in July 2017 as an Assistant Professor of Physics and a researcher at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI).

Her doctoral research focused on dark matter dynamics and high-energy astrophysics.

Career

After earning her Ph.D., Necib conducted postdoctoral research at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and was a Sherman Fairchild Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories. She later joined the faculty at MIT as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics and became a researcher at the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.

Necib’s research integrates computational astrophysics, observational data, and machine learning to study the kinematics of stars and the structure of the Milky Way. She has contributed to understanding how stars move through the galaxy and what those motions reveal about the distribution of dark matter. Her work has been instrumental in uncovering new stellar structures within the Milky Way, including Nyx, a large, prograde stellar stream that provides insights into past galactic mergers and dark matter distribution.

Research

Necib research involves the use of machine learning techniques to analyze large astrophysical datasets, helping to refine models of galactic evolution and the nature of dark matter. It’s because of her work on using Galactic dynamics to understand Dark she was able to build the first map of Dark Matter in the Milky Way.

Necib has published numerous papers on astrophysics and dark matter, collaborating with researchers across multiple institutions. Her 2020 paper in Nature Astronomy, "Evidence for a Vast Prograde Stellar Stream in the Solar Vicinity," co-authored with Bryan Ostdiek, Mariangela Lisanti, Timothy Cohen, Marat Freytsis, Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Philip F. Hopkins, Andrew Wetzel, and Robyn Sanderson, provided significant evidence for the Nyx stellar stream using Gaia mission data and simulations.

Key Publications

• Lina Necib, Bryan Ostdiek, Mariangela Lisanti,  Timothy Cohen, Marat Freytsis, Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Philip F. Hopkins, Andrew Wetzel, Robyn Sanderson. Evidence for a Vast Prograde Stellar Stream in the Solar Vicinity. Nature Astronomy (2020).
• Lina Necib, Mariangela Lisanti, Shea Garrison-Kimmel, Andrew Wetzel, Robyn Sanderson, Philip F. Hopkins, Claude-André Faucher-Giguère, Dušan Kereš. Under the Firelight: Stellar Tracers of the Local Dark Matter Velocity Distribution in the Milky Way.  ApJ 883 no 1. 27.
• Lina Necib, Mariangela Lisanti, Vasily Bolokurov. Inferred Evidence for Dark Matter Kinematic Substructure with SDSS-Gaia. ApJ 874 no.3, 22.
• Jonah Herzog-Arbeitman, Mariangela Lisanti, Lina Necib. The Metal-Poor Stellar Halo in RAVE-TGAS and its Implications for the Velocity Distribution of Dark Matter. JCAP 1804 052.
• Jonah Herzog-Arbeitman, Mariangela Lisanti, Piero Madau, Lina Necib. Empirical Determination of Dark Matter Velocities using Metal-Poor Stars. PRL 120 no.4, 041102.

Awards and Recognitions

Necib has received multiple honors for her contributions to physics and astrophysics, including recognition from the American Physical Society and invitations to speak at major scientific conferences. In 2023, she was awarded the Valley Prize by the American Physical Society for her work on dark matter and galactic dynamics.

In 2012, she was granted a Praecis Presidential Graduate Fellowship and MIT.

In 2016, she won the Sergio Vazquez Prize at MIT.

From 2017 to 2020, she was a part of the Sherman Fairchild Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology.

In 2020, she was a part of the University of California Irvine Presidential Fellowship.

From 2020 to 2021, she was a part of the Carnegie Observations Theoretical Astrophysics Fellow.

In 2023, she won the George E. Valley, Jr. Prize (APS) for the discovery of the stellar structure of the Milky Way that reveals its history.

In 2024, she won the NSF Early Career Development Award and was a part of the Sloan Research Fellow.

Public Engagement and Advocacy

In addition to her research, Necib is an advocate for increasing diversity and representation in physics and astrophysics. She has spoken about her experiences as a woman in theoretical physics and has participated in outreach programs encouraging underrepresented students to pursue careers in STEM fields.