My current research focuses on an 
evolutionary exploration of the morphological properties of galaxies 
at different redshifts. My work at the University of Florida considers 
the transformations, evolution and mass assembly of galaxies. 
I test how galactic properties (morphology, stellar mass distribution) 
of distant galaxies relate to the observed properties of the local 
Universe. One of my major discoveries, obtained with the aid of our HST/ACS 
data of a galaxy cluster progenitor system-the supergroup SG1120-is that 
preprocessing plays a dominant role in transforming morphologies that 
are observed in local galaxy clusters.   

In addition, I performed extensive morphological classification 
(both visual and quantitative, using 2D bulge-disk decomposition) 
and simulations on our HST/ACS imaging data of distant galaxy 
clusters (z~1), where we study the morphological evolution and 
preprocessing of the cluster galaxies.  A third project aims at 
disentangling transformation processes using an exclusive 
multi-wavelength dataset from HST, Spitzer and ground-based 
observations of the "Bullet Cluster," where the dark matter 
and the baryonic matter have been wrenched apart by the 
tremendous collision of two galaxy clusters.