Two new post-doctoral appointments at ATNF
During September, we welcomed two new post-docs to the ATNF. They are Naomi McClure-Griffiths, the 2001 Bolton Fellow, and Daniel (DJ) Pisano, who was awarded a US National Science Foundation Mathematical and Physical Sciences Distinguished International Postdoctoral Research Fellowship to work at the ATNF for two years.
Dr Daniel (DJ) Pisano and Dr Naomi McClure-Griffiths.
Most of us know Naomi well, as she has been a frequent visitor to the ATNF, working at Narrabri and Parkes on projects related to the HI Southern Galactic Plane Survey (SGPS). She grew up in Portland, Oregon and did her undergraduate degree in physics at Oberlin College, Ohio. While there she did an honours project with Dan Stinebring and she made her first visit to the ATNF in late 1996, spending four months working with Dan and Simon Johnston on diffractive scintillation of PSR B1259-63. Following graduation from Oberlin in 1997, she commenced a PhD with John Dickey at the University of Minnesota, working on the SGPS. This survey resulted in very detailed images of the neutral hydrogen in the disk of our Galaxy and has given new insight into large-scale emission structures such as HI shells, supershells, and chimneys.
As a Bolton Fellow, Naomi has a three-year appointment with the ATNF. She has chosen to be based at Marsfield, but as a keen observer, she will often be seen at the Observatories. She plans to continue and extend her work on the HI distribution in the Galaxy, with the aim of understanding the physical processes involved in large shell and chimney formation as part of the disk-halo interaction. There are also plans to extend the SGPS through the Galactic Centre.
Daniel J (DJ) Pisano graduated with a BS in Astronomy & Physics from Yale University in 1996 and completed his PhD in July at the University of Wisconsin - Madison under the supervision of Eric Wilcots. DJ's main interests are in understanding how galaxies assemble their mass and how minor accretion events help drive the evolution of galaxies. His thesis involved surveying a sample of isolated galaxies in HI using the VLA and ATCA in a search for the gaseous remnants of the galaxy formation process. DJ has also done HI and optical studies of the dynamics and star formation properties of NGC 925, and carried out Arecibo observations of nearby blue, compact galaxies to determine their gaseous properties.
As mentioned above, DJ was awarded a National Science Foundation Fellowship to work at the ATNF for two years. As with Naomi, he will be based at Marsfield, and also concentrating on HI studies. However, DJ's interests are more in relation to external galaxies and loose groups of galaxies. In particular, DJ plans to use the Parkes Multibeam receiver to search for low-mass HI clouds in groups of galaxies similar to the Local Group. DJ is also studying the HI properties of nearby luminous blue compact galaxies to better understand the fundamental nature of this class of galaxies and how they might evolve.
Dick Manchester
(Dick.Manchester@csiro.au)