We are both members of the "Great Observatories All-sky LIRG Survey" (GOALS; http://goals.ipac.caltech.edu/). It is a survey of 200 galaxies in the nearby Universe (within ~1 billion light-years) which all have enhanced star formation rates. In this case, enhanced means they are forming 10s to hundreds of solar masses worth of stars per year (compare to our galaxy, which forms ~1 solar mass worth of stars each year). These galaxies are LIRGs (Luminous Infrared Galaxies), which means they were selected by the fact that they have emit a significant amount of their total energy in the infrared. For most of these, that infrared luminosity comes from dust, which has absorbed and re-emitted the optical and ultraviolet light from the young stars which have recently formed (in the past 10-100 Myr).
When you look at LIRGs, say with the Hubble Space Telescope (http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/heic0810/), you see that many of them are galaxies in the process of merging with other galaxies. My focus is on matching computer simulations to individual merger systems. Since these mergers can take up to a billion years to go from start to finish, simulations enable us to "fast forward" and "rewind" each merger. One research interest it to use the simulations to determine how differences in each system's encouter correlates with how much their star formation is enhanced. I'm still working on it so I don't yet have the answer, but hopefully in a couple years!