Our astrophysics effort continues to grow. Richard E. Griffiths and Robert C. Nichol will join our department this year. They, along with Jeff Peterson, give the department a strong presence in observational cosmology.
Richard Griffiths joins us from Johns Hopkins University. He received his Ph.D. from University of Leicester in x-ray astronomy and held positions at Penn State and the Space Telescope Science Institute. His research programs are in space astronomy using earth-orbiting optical and x-ray telescopes. In the Medium Deep Survey, he uses the Hubble Space Telescope to unravel the origins and evolution of galaxies. With data from orbiting x-ray telescopes such as ROSAT and ASCA, Richard probes the origins of the x-ray background from space.
Robert Nichol spent
the last three years at the University of Chicago working on the Sloan Digital Sky Survey.
Robert received his Ph.D. from University of Edinburgh, Scotland. His research program
presently centers on the Sky Survey, which will comprehensively catalogue objects in the
local universe. With these data and observations made in the microwave and x-ray
wavelength regions, Robert and his group will examine how the complex structure of our
local universe formed from the earlier smooth, hot Big Bang.
