Abstract: Reverberation mapping, or "echo" mapping, of nearby (z<0.1) active galaxies has provided direct constraints on the mass of the central supermassive black hole in about 50 galaxies. Furthermore, the size of the region of photoionized gas from which the broad emission lines emanate has been found to scale with the luminosity of the central source. This radius-luminosity relationship is heavily used to estimate black hole masses in quasars at cosmological distances, and is foundational for our understanding of the interplay between black hole and galaxy growth and evolution. I will present an overview of the state of the field and discuss current and future work aimed at minimizing the uncertainties in black hole mass determinations. Speaker Bio: I grew up in Spokane, WA and earned a dual degree (BS+BS) in physics and astronomy at University of Washington in Seattle. I then attended The Ohio State University and worked on my dissertation with Brad Peterson. After earning my PhD in 2007, I worked with Aaron Barth at UC Irvine for two years before being awarded a Hubble Fellowship in 2009 and then accepting a tenure-track faculty position at Georgia State University in 2010. Earlier this year, I was awarded an NSF CAREER grant, and I'm a current member of the NASA Astrophysics Roadmap Committee.

Dust suffuses our diffuse universe, obscures our view, and is a direct product of the formation of stars and galaxies. In this era of large area digital surveys it is both necessary and possible to explore dust in our universe at a level once unheard of. I will discuss new results on dust, both extreme in precision and extreme in position. In my discussion of high precision dust observations, I show how crucial accurate dust maps are to our understanding of cosmology, and I will introduce a new cosmological parameter: the opacity of the universe, tau_z. I will show new results (and a new class of objects) using dust in low density environments, both at the surface of our own galaxy and filling the virial radii of galaxies throughout the universe. I will introduce the idea of exploring feedback from galaxies by studying their dust, and using these observations to constrain our models of galaxy formation.

We are constantly intrigued by how dramatically galaxies evolve when we probe closer to the cosmic dawn. Ten billion years ago, galaxies were forming stars ten times more fiercely than they do today. This phenomenon can be understood in the framework of cold dark matter simulations only if star formation is suppressed in massive dark matter halos. However, the physical mechanisms responsible for the suppression are unclear. Starburst galaxies in massive halos offer a unique laboratory to constrain the suppression processes, because, unlike most galaxies, such processes have apparently failed to operate in these starbursts. Thanks to the Herschel Space Telescope, for the first time we have identified a sample of gravitationally lensed massive starbursts at the peak epoch of cosmic star formation. I will show how high-resolution multi-phase observations in combination with gravitational lensing have helped us gain a comprehensive understanding of these unusual galaxies. I will also describe future projects aimed at constraining the star formation history and the halo-scale gas supply of such massive starbursts. By contrasting with normal galaxies, the results of these studies will be fundamental to a physical understanding of galaxy evolution. Finally, I will present my vision of this field with future ground- and space-based observatories.

Samir Salim (Indiana University)