Abstract

Every year, more and more supermassive black holes (SMBHs) are discovered in the nascent cosmos, and their existence is a problem. Since the discovery of the first accreting SMBHs (referred to as active galactic nuclei or AGN) to recent results from JWST, there are more questions than answers on their prevalence, growth, and impact. Specifically: what drives the rapid growth of early SMBHs and how does this impact the environment they live in at all cosmic epochs? In this talk, I will outline my research program which leverages multi-wavelength observations and simulations to connect SMBH growth and galaxy evolution across a large range of physical scales and times. This includes several investigations on the interplay between AGN triggering pathways, local and large scale environments, and ISM physics that have been largely unexplored and disconnected in early AGN studies. My leading role in current and future surveys and telescopes will yield critically missing AGN populations and enable some of the first and most statistically robust investigations of these extreme sources at early times. In the long term, I will use next generation facilities like Athena, ngVLA, GMT, and Roman to fully characterize SMBH formation and evolution, and their role in shaping the cosmos.