Paola Rodríguez Hidalgo, Ph.D. (she/her/ella)

Associate Professor

Paola Rodríguez Hidalgo, Ph.D. (she/her/ella)

Associate Professor

Dr. Paola Rodrí­guez Hidalgo came to the University of Washington from Cal-Poly Humboldt University in northern California where she was a tenure-track assistant professor of Physics & Astronomy. Born in Colombia and raised in Spain, she studied Physics with specialization in Astrophysics at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid and the Universidad de La Laguna (Instituto de Astrofísica) de las Islas Canarias. She earned her Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Astronomy from the University of Florida and held postdoctoral fellow and research associate positions at the Pennsylvania State University and York University in Toronto, Canada. She was also a visiting assistant professor at the University of Toronto. She loves astronomy, music, and traveling and is passionate about education and helping students succeed in their academic careers. She spends all her free time with loved ones and her cat, Sebastian.

Education

  • University of Florida (UF)
    • Ph.D., Astronomy — Title: “High Velocity Outflows in Quasars”
    • M.Sc., Astronomy
  • Universidad de La Laguna (Canary Islands) + Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain) and Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (Spain)
    • B.Sc., Physics, specialization in Astrophysics with equivalent of Minor in Computer Science

Courses

  • BPHYS 101 Introduction to Astronomy (with and without community engagement)
  • BPHYS 201 Cosmos
  • BPHYS 222 Modern Physics
  • BPHYS 311 Introduction to Astrophysics I
  • BPHYS 312 Introduction to Astrophysics II
  • BPHYS 493 Research Methods in Astronomy & Astrophysics
  • BPHYS 494 Physics Seminar

Teaching Interests

Dr. Rodríguez Hidalgo’s main interest is in how to make the study of Astronomy & Astrophysics more accessible for all students, from non-majors to students wishing to go to graduate school. Her passion for education has led her to study the benefits of teaching using community-based learning approaches, with the goal of a more inclusive and diverse scientific community and a more scientifically literate citizenry. In particular, she works towards helping women and people of color sense they belong in STEM/STEAM and increasing the retention of minority populations in science.

Research and Scholarship Interests

Dr. Rodríguez Hidalgo’s research focuses on some of the most extreme quasar outflows — gas outflowing at more than 10% the speed of light away from the supermassive black hole environments — in the universe. They have called these Extremely High Velocity Outflows. To study them, she uses a combination of space telescopes (such as Hubble, Chandra and XMM-Newton), ground-based telescopes (such as Keck and Palomar) and archival data from surveys such as the amazing Sloan Digital Sky Survey.

① used to denote student authors

  • A New Member of the Fast and Furious Family: A Relativistic and Time-Variable UV Outflow in a Luminous Quasar. Seaton, L., Hall, P., Flores, L.①, Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Veltri., M., Zhu, Z., Serna, J., Brandt, W., Anderson, S., Asset, R., Bañados, E., Grier, C., Homayouni, Y., Morrison, S., Negrete, C.A., Rankine, A., Runnoe, J., Schneider, D., Shen, Y., Temple, M., Trakhtenbrot, B., Trump, J., Weiss, E. Under review in ApJ (12/2025)
  • C IV wind properties of the SDSS-V X-ray selected quasars: strong optical-to-UV emission is key regardless of X-ray strength. Rankine, A., Homan, D., Aird, J., Hiremath, P., Anderson, S., Assef, R., Bauer, F., Brandt, W., Brusa, M., Buchner, J., Chira, M., Díaz, Y., Hall, P., Koekmouer, A., Krumpe, M., Lamer, G., Liu, T., Morrison, S., Musiimenta, B., Negrete, C.A., Ni, Q., Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Salvato, M., Schneider, D., Shen, Y., Temple, M., Tubín-Arenas, D., Wylezalek, D. Under review in MNRAS (1/2026)
  • Radial Gradients Revealed by Multiscale Outflows from Down-the-Barrel Spectroscopy towards a Highly Luminous Quasar. Yi, W., Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Chen, C., Hall, P., He, Z., Pierce, E.①, Schneider, D., Brandt, W., Wu, X-B., Bai, J-M. Submitted to ApJL (11/2025)
  • Perceptions of success for marginalized faculty members at primarily undergraduate institutions. Trujillo, C. M., Chen, C., Ezeonwu. M.C., Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Mashhadi, A., Reynoso, E., Price, R. M. Submitted to the Review of Higher Education (11/2025)
  • Sloan Digital Sky Survey-V: Pioneering Panoptic Spectroscopy, Kollmeier, J. A. + 216 authors (including Rodríguez Hidalgo, P.,) 2026, AJ, 171, 52.
  • SDSS-V Black Hole Mapper: The Index Diagram as a tool to disentangle the influence of the Host Galaxy in Quasar spectra. Negrete, C. A., Sandoval-Orozco, R., Ibarra-Medel, H., Tapia, B., Assef, R. J. , Dultzin, D., Lacerna, I., Morrison, S., Anderson, S. F., Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Aydar, C., Bauer, F. E., Benitez, E., Bizyaev, D., Brandt, W. N., Brownstein, J. R.,  Buchner, J., Cruz-González, I.,  González-Buitrago, D.,  Hernández-Toledo, H., Jenaro-Ballesteros, N., Koekemoer, A., Krongold, Y., Martínez-Aldama, M. L., Pan, K., Ricci, C., Salvato, M., Sánchez, S. F., Serrano-Félix, D., Schneider, D. P., Sniegowska, M., Trakhtenbrot, B., Wu, Q., Wylezalek, D., Yang, Q., Zermeño, R. J., 2015, MNRAS, 543, 4272
  • An Extremely High Velocity Outflow in SMSS J2157-3602, the Most Luminous Quasar in the First 1.3 Gyr. Vietri, G., Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Rankine, A, Zappacosta, L., Piconcelli, E., Flores①, L., Sachet, I., Melandri, A., Testa, V., D’Odorico, V., Hall, P., Lanzáis, G., Misawa, T., Onken, C., Sarnari, F., Vignali, C., Wolf, C., A&A, 704, 166
  • X-ray-selected Broad Absorption Line Quasars in SDSS-V:  BALs and non-BALs span the full range of X-ray properties. Hiremath, P., Rankine, A., Aird, J., Brandt, W., Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Anderson, S., Aydar, C., Ricci, C., Schneider, D., Vivek, M., Morrison, S., Salvato, M., 2025, MNRAS, 542, 2105.
  • Massive Extremely High-Velocity Outflow in the Quasar J164653.72+243942.2
    Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Choi, H., Hall, P., Leighly, K., Flores, L.①, Charles, M.①, DeFrancesco, C.①, Hlavacek-Larrondo, J., and Perreault-Levasseur, L., 2025, ApJ, 990, 152.
  • Coordinated X-ray and UV absorption within the accretion disk wind of the active galactic nucleus PG 1126-041. Giustini, M., Rodríguez Hidalgo, P., Reeves, J., Matzeu, G., Braito, V., Eracleous, M., Hall, P., Chartas, G., Ponti, G., Schartel, N., Waters, T., Dadina, M., Miniutti, G., Cappi, M., Proga, D., Vignali, C., and de Vries, L., 2023, A&A, 679, 73.
  • Connection between Emission and Absorption Outflows through the Study of Quasars with Extremely-High Velocity Outflows link. Rodríguez Hidalgo, P. & Rankine, 2022, ApJL, 939L, 24
For a complete list, please check Google Scholar.

Selected

② used to denote DEIJ activities

  • HELP APPLYING MACHINE LEARNING TO SEARCH FOR SOME OF THE MOST EXTREME OUTFLOWS IN THE UNIVERSE (2026). e-Science AI-Accelerator program.
  • NEAR-INFRARED SPECTROSCOPY OF QUASARS WITH EXTREMELY HIGH VELOCITY OUTFLOWS (2025 – 2026). Gemini Telescope. Co-I (PI: Harum Ahmed, UNT). 12.5 hrs of Gemini Telescope time
  • SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY FAST 4WARD GRANT②  (2025 – 2026)
    PI. GLOBAL INNOVATION FUND②  (2025 – 2029). PI, Co-PI with Prof. David Goldstein (UW Bothell, IAS).
  • COIL / STUDY ABROAD LAUNCH GRANT (2024 – 2025). PI, co-PI: Prof. David Goldstein.
  • NATIONAL PHYSICS REU LEADERSHIP GROUP WORKSHOP AND COMMUNITY BUILDING②  (2024). NSF – REU Supplement. Co-I
  • SLOAN DIGITAL SKY SURVEY FAST III GRANT②  (2023 – 2024). PI.
  • CONFERENCE: AGN WINDS ON THE CHESAPEAKE②  (2023). NSF-AAG grant
    Co-PI (PI: Stephen Kramer, Catholic University of America).
  • COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: UNDERSTANDING THE LIMITS OF AGN FEEDBACK: A DEDICATED STUDY OF EXTREMELY HIGH VELOCITY OUTFLOWS (2021 – 2024). NSF-AAG grant. PI (co-PI: Prof. Daniel Proga — UNLV)
  • PHYSICS RESEARCH AT UWB (2021 – 2023). NSF-REU grant. Co-PI (PI: Prof. Joey Key — UW Bothell).
  • USING EXTREME OUTFLOWS TO STUDY THE PHYSICS OF SUPER-MASSIVE BLACK HOLES (2020 – 2021). Royalty Research Fund at the University of Washington
    PI.
  • TEACHING ASTRONOMY THROUGH FUN HANDS-ON ACTIVITIES  (2018)
    NSERC PromoScience. PI  (co-PI: Dr. Matt Russo — UofT).
  • YOU BELONG HERE! WORKSHOP② (2016). Diversity Grant at Humboldt State University. PI (co-PI: group of female STEM faculty — HSU).

Selected

② used to denote DEIJ activities

  • OUTSTANDING UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH MENTOR AWARD (2023)
    Nominated by students, 7 were selected among 368 nominations at UW
  • Selected among all University of Washington to submit only JOHNSON&JOHNSON WiSTEM2D 2023 SCHOLARS AWARD — SCIENCE (2022)
  • LATINX FACULTY RECOGNITION AWARD (2022)
  • TECHNOLOGY TEACHING FELLOW (2020)
  • DIVERSITY, EQUITY & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FELLOWSHIP② (2019, 2020)
  • EXCEPTIONAL SERVICE TO STUDENTS AWARD② (2017)

Student Mentorship

More than 60 students, from first years to seniors and from several disciplines. Students have current positions as faculty, graduate students, and industry jobs (Microsoft, Boeing).

Selected

  • Liliana Flores (UW Bothell 2025), MSc student at York University (Toronto)
  • Taylor Gibbons (UW Bothell 2024), Network Automation Engineer at Accretive Technologies Group
  • Abby Wang (UW Bothell 2024), Software engineer at Microsoft
  • Anish Saurav Rijal (UW Bothell 2024), Propulsion Engineer at Boeing
  • Easton Pierce (UW Bothell 2023), MSc at the University of Oregon and Sr Intern at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Advanced Technologies
  • Dakota Bunger (UW Bothell 2022), Data Scientist at Springboard
  • Aria Li (UW Bothell 2022), Associate Software Engineer at Puppet by Perforce
  • Cort Thoreson (UW Bothell 2022), PhD student at Northeastern University (Boston)
  • Shushmitha Radjaram (UW Bothell 2022), Business Intelligence Engineer at Amazon
  • Mikel Charles (UW Bothell 2021), PhD student at Ohio State University
  • Daria Voblikova (UW Bothell 2020), Software engineer at FactSet
  • Wynter Broussard (UW Bothell 2020), PhD student at UC Riverside
  • Andrey Vayner (UofT 2012), Assistant Professor at Florida Gulf Coast University
  • Community Engagement Faculty Lead, UW Tri-campus initiative to build institutional capacity for community engagement (2024)
  • Astronomy Day coordinator, two-hours event to bring Astronomy to the public at UW Bothell as part of BPHYS 101 Intro to Astronomy course (2019 – …)
  • Faculty at the Center for Community Partnerships to help develop systematic practices in Service Learning (UofT, 2013-2015)

② used to denote DEIJ activities

  • DIVERSITY, EQUITY & COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT FELLOWSHIP (2019, 2020)
    University of Washington Bothell
  • Co-organizer of You Belong Here!②, a 1-day workshop to empower women and other minorities in STEM (2017 – 2018)

Current service

  • Member of the Faculty Council on Tri-Campus Policy (2025 – 2027)
  • Co-PSD Events Coordinator (2025 – 2026)
  • Part-Time Hire Committee in PSD (2025 – 2026)
  • National Society of Hispanic Physicists
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • American Physical Society
  • American Association of Physics Teachers
  • American Astronomical Society
  • Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
  • Canadian Astronomical Society

(includes current and previous)