Dr. Nathan Smith is interested in understanding the evolution and fate of massive stars, and their influence on the surrounding interstellar medium. His primary focus is on the violent explosions and eruptions that occur as a massive star approaches its death, especially those of the most massive and luminous stars known. Although these stars drive the energetics of the interstellar medium and are extremely bright and easy to observe, the way they reach their demise and finally explode is still very poorly understood. Nathan specializes in multiwavelength spectroscopy and high-resolution imaging of supernovae and other transients in order to study explosions observed in real time, and he studies spatially resolved circumstellar material in order to constrain the physical properties of mass-loss episodes that have occurred in the past.