New Graduate Students

New graduate students from left to right, beginning with the top row: Mark Pitts, Nick Moskovitz, Hai Fu, Luke Dundon, David Harrington, Steve Rodney, Jeyhan Kartaltepe, Lisa Chien, and Bin Yang (inset).

In September, eight students who received a bachelor's degree in 2003 arrived at IfA to begin their graduate studies. Li Hsin (Lisa) Chien (a graduate of National Taiwan University) has already done some research in cosmology and on imaging circumstellar disks around Vega-type stars and Seyfert galaxies. She is most interested in extragalactic astronomy, especially merging galaxies. Luke Dundon (U.S. Naval Academy) is an active duty naval officer whose goal is a master's degree. As an undergraduate, he participated in a study of the physical properties of near-Earth objects.

Hai Fu (Nanjing University) says that the large telescopes atop Mauna Kea brought him here. For David Harrington (Michigan Technical University), Hawaii was the obvious choice for graduate school because his other interests include martial arts, Japanese language, and fire knife dancing.

As an undergraduate, Jeyhan Kartaltepe (Colgate) researched quasars. She also spent two summers at Space Telescope Science Institute and at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. Nicholas Moskovitz (University of California, Santa Barbara) wrote a senior thesis in the field of semiconductor physics with applications to quantum computing. He is here to pursue an interest in astrobiology.

Mark Pitts (Ohio State) wants to study extrasolar planets. He participated in the IfA's first Research for Undergraduates (REU) program in 2001. As an undergraduate, Steve Rodney (Case Western Reserve) worked on a survey of galaxy clusters that searched for intracluster light. He also researched the design of an X-ray telescope.

In January, Bin Yang joined our graduate program. She has a master's degree from Beijing University for her work in planetary astronomy and is a research assistant to David Tholen.

More information about our graduate program can be found at http://www.ifa.hawaii.edu/gradprog/