Professional Title/Position

Associate Professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Physics and Astronomy

Degrees and Education

• Ph.D., Astronomy, Champaign, 1997
• B.S., Physics, Cambridge, 1992

Written Biography

Vicky Kalogera received her Ptihio (B.S.) in Physics in 1992 from the University of Thessaloniki in Greece and her Ph.D. in Astronomy in 1997 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1997 she joined the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics as a CfA Postdoctoral Fellow and she was also awarded the Clay Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2000. Kalogera was appointed Assistant Professor at Northwestern University in the Department of Physics and Astronomy in 2001, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2006, and was named the Erastus Otis Haven Professor of Physics and Astronomy in 2009. She is a co-founder and current Director of CIERA, the Center for Interdisciplinary Exploration and Research in Astrophysics, an endowed research center at Northwestern focused on advancing astrophysics studies with emphasis on interdisciplinary connections, when appropriate.

Kalogera's research interests are in the astrophysics of compact objects and in particular their formation and evolution in multiple stellar systems. She studies the physical properties of X-ray binaries, millisecond radio pulsars and double compact objects in our own and other galaxies and works on the theoretical interpretation of current observations of their electromagnetic emission and their anticipated gravitational radiation. More recently she has expanded into projects in gravitational-wave data analysis and astrophysical modeling involving methods from applied mathematics, statistics, and computer science, with extensive use of high-performance computing. Among Kalogera's awards and honors are the David and Lucile Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering, the Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award by the American Physical Society (APS), the Cottrell Scholar Award by the Research Corporation, the NSF CAREER Award in Astronomy, the A.J. Cannon Award by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), and most recently a Fellowship in Theoretical Physics by the Simons Foundation.

In 2010 she was elected in the Chair-line of the APS Division of Computational Physics, and she currently serves as the Division’s past Chair. In the past she has served on the Astrophysics Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council Science Committee, the NASA Chandra Users Committee, and has also been an elected member of the Executive Committees of the APS Division of Astrophysics, the APS Topical Group on Gravity, and the AAS High Energy Astrophysics Division.

Candidate Statement

I would be honored to serve through the chair-line of the AAS HEAD Executive Committee; having served in the past on the committee as a Member-at-Large I am familiar with the responsibilities and the Committee's role in advancing what benefits our community within the broader astronomy and physics communities. With a number of anticipated developments in the next few we have an exciting future of discoveries to look forward to. I am excited to work hard on making sure we get prepared through the HEAD meetings and activities and highlight in the best possible way the successes to come. I am also particularly interested in expanding professional development opportunities for the young researchers in our community, preparing them with the broad range of skills necessary for their success in a wide range of career paths.

Professional Title/Position

Professor, Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland

Degrees and Education

• Postdoctoral Researcher, JILA, Univerisity of Colorado, 1996-2001
• Ph.D., Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, 1996
• Master of Mathematics, Cambridge, 1993
• B.A., Physics and Theoretical Physics, Cambridge, 1992

Written Biography

Reynolds formal education was in the United Kingdom, where he received a B.A. in Physics and Theoretical Physics (1992), a Masters in Mathematics (1993), and a Ph.D. in Astronomy (1996 - advisor Prof. Andy Fabian), all from the University of Cambridge. After receiving his Ph.D., he was a postdoctoral research associate in JILA at the University of Colorado (1996-2001; Hubble Fellow from 1998-2001) before joining the faculty at the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP) where he now holds the rank of Professor. His research into the astrophysics of black holes was rewarded with the AAS's Helen B. Warner Prize in 2005.

Reynolds has a long track record of service to the high-energy astrophysics community. Locally, he served as Director of the UMCP/NASA-Goddard Joint Space Science Institute (JSI) from 2010-2013 and is currently Director of the UMCP-Astronomy Center for Theory and Computation. At a national level, he was an elected member of the HEAD Executive Committee (2006-2009), and chaired the Chandra Users Committee (2005-2008). He also served on one of the Astro2010/Decadal-Survey Science Frontier Panel (2009-2010), the recent NASA Astrophysics 30yr Roadmapping task force (2013), and the NASA X-ray Astrophysics Probe Science and Technology Definition Team. Reynolds is a member of the Swift and NuSTAR science teams, and is a NASA "selected science advisor" for the Astro-H project.

Candidate Statement

These are exciting and challenging times for the U.S. high-energy astrophysics community. In the present and near-term, the operating and soon-to-be-launched fleet of X/gamma-ray missions continue to change our view of the Universe. At the same time, many of the traditional funding sources are drying up, putting unprecedented pressure on our community and driving an increasing number of our best and brightest young scientists out of the field. The long term challenges are even more serious, with the U.S. facing the prospect of an irreversible loss of capability in technologies related to X-ray and gravitational wave astronomy as Europe positions itself to take leadership in these two major fields. As HEAD Vice Chair, and then Chair, I will strive to maintain a vibrant and optimistic scientific environment for our members (through our newsletters, HEAD meetings, HEAD Prizes, and other events) while at the same time working with the AAS leadership to face these challenges. I believe in an active engagement with NASA, Congress and the Administration. Given the public appeal of our subject, astronomers, and high-energy astrophysicists in particular, are especially well placed to advanced the excitement and necessity of fundamental research to decision makers in DC. Only by tackling these policy issues at the highest level now can we ensure a healthy U.S. high-energy astrophysics community in the future decades.

Professional Title/Position

Senior Research Scientist & Associate Director, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

Instrumentation; astrophysics of galaxy clusters; planning

Candidate Statement

As one of many who have benefited greatly from HEAD, I would find it a privilege to be able to serve on its Executive Committee. Our remarkable professional community has been sustained in large measure by our tradition of high-quality meetings which are both intellectually and socially compelling. We need to continue this tradition while working to encourage and enable the broadest possible participation in it. At the same time, just as many of us work beyond the confines of a single wavelength domain, we must see to it that the larger astrophysical community understands why our tools and methods have become as indispensable as any others in the astronomer's arsenal. This message needs to be conveyed within our home institutions and our funding agencies. Finally, as our field is now truly global, we must work harder than ever before to ensure that HEAD thrives as a truly international community.

Professional Title/Position

Assistant Professor, NASA Roman Fellow, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa

Research Areas, Topics, and Interests

Suborbital rocket based soft X-ray spectroscopy, off-plane reflection grating technology development, future X-ray grating spectrometers, supernova remnant interactions with their environments, pulsar wind nebula evolution

Candidate Statement

The current state of high energy astrophysics presents many challenges for the HEAD Executive Committee. While missions such as Chandra and XMM continue to make important and exciting discoveries, newer observatories such as Fermi and NuSTAR continue the legacy of high energy missions. However, we are at risk of suffering a long delay until the next major NASA mission, and with it a reduction in technology development, and worse, interest of young researchers in our field. As a member of the HEAD Executive Committee, my goal will be to reinvigorate high energy astrophysics with an emphasis on graduate students, research associates, and early career researchers. First, I will support the annual HEAD meetings which represent an important avenue to share ideas and discoveries. I am interested in helping to organize special workshops and sessions dedicated to novel scientific results and technology developments accomplished by the next generation of high energy astrophysicists. This will help to promote the widespread dissemination of these breakthroughs, which are consistently occurring throughout our field. It is also important to increase the visibility of our accomplishments to the broader scientific and political communities. If elected to serve on the Executive Committee, I will advocate the community’s goals to the public and to policy makers. To be successful in the decades to come, our field requires high visibility of our science results, and high priority for our future science goals. High energy astronomy is poised for its next cycle of new instrumentation leading to new discoveries. As a HEAD Executive Committee member and as a member of the community as a whole, I will strive to see this become reality.

Professional Title/Position

Professor, Department of Astronomy, University of Massachusetts

Professional Experience and Positions

• Visiting Chair Professor at Nanjing University, China
• Raymond and Beverley Sackler Distinguished Visiting Astronomer at University of Cambridge
• Frontier science panel member of the US 2010 Decadal Survey on Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Member of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton

Candidate Statement

High Energy Astrophysics plays a key role in our understanding of the cosmos. To maintain this field as a productive and exciting area of science, we must actively interact with the larger astronomy community and communicate our excitement to the general public. As someone who has researched on a broad range of topics (compact stars; galactic nuclei; the interstellar, circumgalactic, and intergalactic media; and hydrodynamic simulations), has worked primarily at institutes (both in US and abroad) where high-energy astrophysics typically represents a relatively minor research field, and has interacted substantially with the radio/IR/UV community, I believe I can bring a breadth of perspective to the HEAD executive committee. I will seek effective communications between the HEAD and the broad astronomy community. I am particularly interested in organizing, or helping to organize, science-oriented special sessions or topical workshops that will bring in theorists and observers working in various wavelengths. I will also actively promote the widespread appreciation of the opportunity and scientific potential of high-energy research, as well as its exciting discoveries.

Professional Title/Position

Associate Professor, Department of Physics, MIT

Candidate Statement

Gravitational-wave science has been on the periphery of HEAD for the past decade or so. As advanced LIGO begins operations in the next two years, we appear to finally be at the point where GW measurements will contribute directly to our understanding of high-energy phenomena in astronomy and astrophysics. Of particular excitement in this era will be the science that can be done by combining GWs with broad spectrum electromagnetic measurements. In a similar vein, pulsar timing has benefited tremendously from high-energy measurements (particularly pulsar discoveries with Fermi that were later found to be radio emitters); and the science case for a low-frequency space-based GW instrument like eLISA has benefited tremendously from what we have learned about massive black holes in the past decade. As a member of the HEAD Executive Committee, my prime goal will be to bring together the "traditional" HEAD community and the GW community. In particular, I will work to make sure that, as LIGO and sister instruments reach advanced sensitivity, their efforts (and, I hope, discoveries!) are included in the upcoming HEAD meetings, and that the GW community is aware of developments in missions, instrumentation, and facilities that will be needed in order to learn as much as possible from the events that they will soon be measuring.

Professional Title/Position

Assistant Professor of Physics, The George Washington University

Degrees and Education

• 2008-2012, postdoc, University of Rome Sapienza, Penn State University, California Institute of Technology

Professional Experience and Positions

• 2012-present, Assistant Professor of Physics, The George Washington University; AAS, APS: member
• 2010-present, LIGO Scientific collaboration: member

Candidate Statement

In the next few years, the high-energy astrophysics community will likely become a key player in multi-messenger studies of the most energetic astrophysical phenomena. In particular, ongoing high-energy astrophysics missions working in concert with advanced ground-based gravitational-wave detectors are expected to open a completely new era in astronomy. I have been active in the fields of high-energy astrophysics and gravitational-wave physics since the years of my PhD, developing a broad perspective on the opportunities and challenges that working across these fields poses to young researchers. As a member of the HEAD executive committee, I would bring this new perspective to help ensure an effective communication between the high-energy astrophysics community and the gravitational-wave one, and help promote the role of the HEAD in multi-messenger astronomy on the wider scale of the AAS.