H. Thankful Cromartie

Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy

Thankful Cromartie earned her Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Virginia in 2020 and moved to Ithaca, NY as an NHFP Einstein postdoctoral fellow at Cornell University. She then served as a National Research Council Postdoctoral Associate at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, DC through May 2026. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Vanderbilt. Her research concerns millisecond pulsar (MSP) timing and its application to the detection of nHz gravitational waves with pulsar timing arrays. She also precisely measures neutron star masses using radio and gamma-ray observations of MSPs in an effort to constrain the neutron star equation of state. Since 2015, she has been a member of the North American Nanohertz Observatory for Gravitational Waves (NANOGrav) collaboration, and currently serves as chair of its Pulsar Timing working group (Feb. 2021 - present).