Department Chair
Dr. Karl Gebhardt
Karl Gebhardt’s research focuses on two main areas: black holes and dark energy. His work on black holes has helped build the case that a class of medium-mass black holes exists in between the stellar-mass black holes that result when massive stars explode as supernovae and the supermassive black holes that lie at the hearts of galaxies. Karl is also one of the architects of HETDEX, the $34-million Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment. This McDonald Observatory project seeks to understand dark energy, that enigmatic force causing the universe’s expansion to speed up. Dark energy has been called the most important puzzle in all of science today. Karl received his Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from Rutgers University.
Department Associate Chair
Dr. Keely Finkelstein
Keely Finkelstein is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Astronomy at The University of Texas at Austin, and also a Faculty Assistant Director of the Office of STEM Education Excellence (STEMx) in the College of Natural Sciences. Her work explores star formation in the Milky Way, looking at regions of ongoing recent star formation using data taken in the infrared and far-IR, from observatories such as the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory.
Staff Leadership
Keary Kinch
- Director of Development
- Astronomy
- McDonald Observatory
Undergraduate Studies
Keith Hawkins
- Associate Professor
- Astronomy
Adam Kraus
- Professor
- Astronomy
Graduate Studies
Harriet Dinerstein
- Professor
- Astronomy
Julian Muñoz
- Assistant Professor
- Astronomy
- Weinberg Institute