Robert Thompson finishes his PhD and moves on to University of Arizona.

Combining passion for astronomy and a knack for computational science, Robert Thompson, who just became Dr. Thompson this month, completed his bachelor's, Master's, and doctoral degrees at UNLV. He completed his MS and PhD theses under Prof. Nagamine, studying galaxy formation and the large scale structure of the universe. Next month he will move to Tucson to begin postdoctoral research under Romeel Dave at UofA, which has a world renowned astrophysics department. In the second year of his postdoc he will relocate to South Africa to finish his postdoc at the University of The Western Cape.

Prof. Ken Nagamine was awarded the Chandra theory grant.

A research grant of $67,631 is awarded by the NASA Chandra program to Dr. Nagamine.  This grant is for support of the project entitled, “Discriminating different AGN feedback models with multi-scale hydrodynamic simulations."

Prof. Daniel Proga was awarded an HST theory grant.

A research grant of $70,894 was awarded by the Space Telescope Science Institute, AURA to Dr. Proga. This grant is for support of the project entitled “Thermal and Dynamical Models of Broad Line Regions in AGN - Testing Virial Estimators of Black Hole Masses.”

Russell Frank Astronomy Lecture Series is born!

Dr. Russell Frank has donated $25,000 to UNLV to establish a public astronomy lecture series. To commemorate the establishment of the series, we are inviting Prof. John Johnson from Caltech, a leader in exoplanet research, to give the first talk. A new speaker will be invited every semester, so be sure to keep an eye on our department news! Recorded talks will appear on our public outreach page.

Flying Apple succeeds in another balloon launch!

You might remember that one of our recent Ph.D. graduate, Dr. Amanda Maxham, who is currently teaching AST104 as a visiting faculty, also operates Flying Apple Space Technologies, and her team has succeeded in capturing the video from one of their first few space balloon launch at Nipton, NV back in December 2011. Check it out!

Our recent undergraduate, Ms. Tesla Birnbaum, gets a job at SLAC!

Ms. Tesla Birnbaum, who graduated in 2011 with BS in physics and did undergraduate research with Prof. Zhang, will begin a job as an Accelerator Systems Operator at the SLAC National Accelerator Observatory. She will start working there in late May. Congrats, Tesla!

Bing Zhang receives the Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award

The Barrick Scholar Awards are designed to recognize faculty members who have established a record of distinguished research or have demonstrated excellence in an area of creative activity. In particular, the Barrick Distinguished Scholar Award is presented to faculty members with 10 years of service or more in an academic environment after the terminal degree, and it carries a $5,000 stipend.

Prof. Ken Nagamine receives the College of Sciences Distinguished Researcher Award.

The UNLV College of Sciences honors its own faculty and professional staff who have made significant contributions in various areas, including teaching, research, and community service activities. This year, Prof. Nagamine received the 2011 Distinguished Research Award for his forefront research on galaxy formation and evolution over the years.