Issue date: 6/10/09 Section: News

Media Credit: Stephen Fogg Assistant professor of Astronomy Kim-Vy Tran is the most recent addition to the University's Astronomy program. She recieved her doctorate from the University of California at Santa Cruz and Lick Observavory. [Click to enlarge]

There's a new astronomer in town.

Assistant astronomy professor Kim-Vy Tran is the latest addition to a growing group of astronomers in the Physics Department.

"We are very energetic," Tran said. "We have a lot of motivations, and we're coherent in how we want to build the undergraduate program and the graduate program."

Tran's research focuses on massive, distant galaxies.

"The light of the nearest star takes four years to get here, so we're seeing that star the way it was four years ago. I look at galaxies where it takes anywhere between five and twelve billion years to get here. You're seeing these objects the way they were five billion years ago," Tran said. "You get to have that time machine, looking at galaxies billions of years ago when the earth was in different ages."

Tran's arrival isn't the only exciting thing happening in the Physics Department, said Department Head Ed Fry.

A new physics building on the north side of campus is nearing completion. The building will house all of the Physics Department's teaching facilities, Fry said.

"I think it's going to have a huge impact on our teaching capabilities," Fry said. "The building itself is a fabulous building."

The George P. and Cynthia Woods Mitchell Institute for Fundamental Physics and Astronomy and the George P. Mitchell '40 Physics Building is slated to open by the end of 2009.

"It's a green building," Fry said. "There's a big cistern in the ground that collects rainwater and will be used to water the garden as well as the grounds around the building."

Continued...

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