GENERAL
SCIENCE STAFF & ADVISERS
Office: 149 Willamette Hall Tel 541-346-3288
(or sign up on the office door)
Professor James M. Schombert (General Science Program Director)
became director of the General Science Program in 2002. Although new as
director of the program this year, Schombert has served on the General
Science Committee as a physics representative for a number of years, and
is thus not new to the program. Schombert is an observational astronomer
whose research centers around galaxy evolution and formation, as well as
topics in cosmology. His recent research interests deal with the study
of the evolution of galaxies through the phenomenon of lookback time, our
ability to see into the past as we look farther into space. He is a member
of NASA's Science Definition Team for the National Virtual Observatory,
a federal initiative to link our space and ground-based observatories and
datasets into a vast virtual system for doing new types of science. After
receiving his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1984, Schombert was a postdoctoral
fellow at Caltech and a visiting assistant professor at UMichigan. Before
arriving at UOregon in 1996, he was a staff scientist at NASA/Caltech for
6 years, the last two working for the Astrophysics Division of NASA HQ,
Washington, D.C. He has been doing research and teaching the introductory
astronomy courses at the University of Oregon since 1996. He has also developed
two new courses, `21st Century Science' for the Honors College and `History
of Space Flight' for the Freshmen Seminars.