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Planned books:

Current books:

  • Fifth Business by Robertson Davies

  • The Rough Guide to Climate Change, 2nd Edition by Robert Henson

  • Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance by Barack Obama

Recent books:

Music

Welcome to my personal web page. I'm a member of the faculty in the Astronomy and Astrophysics department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. I am also Dean of the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences. This web site collects information on my non-administrative work and interests.

My primary research activities are centered on broadband observations of compact objects — the white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes that mark the ultimate end of a star's life. Over the years, I have mostly been concerned with radio pulsars. Some of my work is aimed at understanding the basic properties of these objects, including distances, velocities, masses, radii, and radiation mechanisms. For many years, I have also been interested in how we can use radio pulsars as laboratories to study nuclear and gravitational physics in extreme conditions. I work with many collaborators, using all of the major national radio telescope facilities, as well as the Hubble Space Telescope. I'm also actively involved in planning for the upcoming Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, and am coordinating science planning for a Small Explorer class X-ray mission called NuSTAR, recently restarted after a budgetary hiatus and now scheduled for launch in 2011.

I am fortunate to have two excellent graduate students working with me on this research: Scott Seagroves, on pulsar astrometry, and Bülent Kiziltan, on high-energy observations.

My teaching includes the introductory survey course The Violent Universe as well as the advanced undergraduate course on high energy astrophysics, and graduate courses on radio astronomy and compact objects.

I have recently completed a term as a member of the UCSC Committee on Research, and was also the campus representative to the University Committee on Research Policy. I am generally interested in the promotion of research at UCSC, and also have strong personal interests in academic freedom as well as in policies that ensure that research at the University of California remains open to all University members and insulated from external political pressures.

Before taking on the duties of dean, I served as Chair of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Associate Dean of Physical and Biological Sciences, and Chair of the Committee on Research (and later Parliamentarian) of the UCSC Academic Senate. My wife thinks I'm overextended. But she moonlights as President of the School Board (after a successful re-election run last fall) so she is a bit busy herself.