Hello! Bonjour! Hola! Aloha!
- Welcome to my home page! I am an astronomer
and the Director of the WIYN Observatory, which operates two telescopes on Kitt Peak, Arizona. The main WIYN facility is a modern 3.5 meter telescope with
superb possibilities for conducting world-class astrophysical research. WIYN is currently building the most sophisticated wide-field camera for astronomy, the One Degree Imager, which should be available for science in 2011. Prior to this current position, I was the Director of Science Operations at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. At CFHT, I was also the Project Scientist/Manager
of the Queued Service Observing (QSO) project and the Manager of the CFHT Astronomy Group.
Before all of that, I got my Ph.D in astrophysics at the
Université Laval (Quebec City) in 1992, spent 3 years as a post-doc
fellow at Steward Observatory (Tucson, Az) and, for almost 2 years,
I was a fellow for the ESO New Technology Telescope in Chile.
- On the science side, I am working on the chemical
evolution of galaxies, star formation, morphology of galaxies, and interacting
systems. I am particularly interested (no, sorry, obsessed) by barred
spirals. More recently, I have become interested in near-IR observations of planetary nebulae in order to study the molecular hydrogen in these objects. Hopefully, I'll have time to put some of my work on
this site some day....
- On the personal side, I was born in St-Alexis
de Matapédia, a very small village in the eastern part of the
Province of Québec where my parents still live. I am married
to wonderful Dr. Patricia E. Pérez, a Texan from Houston (yes, the
home of the Astros but also the giant mosquitoes...), and we both live
in a nice house on the eastern side of Tucson, with our cats Socks and Smokey.
I like professional sports, particularly hockey and baseball, but my
favorite hobby is drumming! I have been
bashing the heads for well over 30 years now, mostly playing along drummers
from my favorite progressive rock bands, and I have no plan to stop
anytime soon (so beware if you're looking for quiet neighbours...)! I have recently joined
a few musicians here in Tucson and started a soon-to-be-named Rush Tribute Band. We expect to go out and
perform in 2010... Stay tuned!
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