Nick Konidaris

I am a senior postdoctoral scholar in the Caltech Astronomy department. From September 2008 to June 2010 my primary responsibility was to develop the MOSFIRE spectrograph. From July 2010 to today I am the principle investigator of the SED Machine. I work closely with Robert Quimby, Shri Kulkarni, and Richard Ellis I serve two roles as an astronomer.

First, I'm an instrumentalist. I worked on the MOSFIRE hardware and software and am now in the process of implemnting a new low resolution spectrograph called the SED Machine for 1 - 4 m telescopes.

Second, I'm an observer, I work on the DEEP2 and AEGIS surveys. Using data from these surveys, I studied the evolution of the ionized interstellar medium of early type galaxies from z ~ 0.1 to 2.5. In the future, I plan to be more involved in the science and instrumentation for transient surveys.

My research interests include:

Panchromatic SEDs of the AEGIS field. I wrote a tool to interactively explore their SEDs.
Producing systematically similar visual morphologies in SDSS and AEGIS galaxies.
I am a former member of the Automated Planet Finder team at Lick Observatory.
Small and highly targeted (cheap) instrumentation. I maintain a list of interesting instruments that warrant further study.
Astrophotonics
Improving my efficiency through organization.

My academic genealogy is NP Konidaris (2009) → DC Koo (1981) → IR King (1952) → H Shapley (1913) → HN Russell (1900) → CA Young (no Ph.D.)

My past work experience:

Grad student at UCO/Lick.
I was an engineer for about one and half years at the Jet Propulsion Labs Optical Communication Group.
In 1999 David Rust at the JHU/Applied Physics Lab, PI of the Flare Genesis project, shipped me to the Antarctic.
I was a summer student at the Brookhaven National Lab for the ARM Data Center.

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