Rob Knop : Physics & Astronomy
- BS : Harvey Mudd College, Physics, 1990
- PhD : Caltech, Physics, 1997; thesis title: Spatially Resolved Near-Infrared Spectroscopy of Seyfert Galaxies
- Post-doc : LBNL, Supernova Cosmology Project, 1996-2001
- Assistant Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Vanderbilt University, 2001-2007
- Professor of Physics, Quest University Canada, 2010-Present
I am currently teaching physics, astronomy, and related subjects at Quest University Canada. (Here is my entry on the faculty section of the Quest web page.) Quest is on the block system, whereby students take only one class at a time. The class is very intense, and lasts for three and a half weeks. See my Classes page for more information about the classes I teach.
In past incarnations, I was an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University. Before that, as a post-doc at LBNL, I was part of one of the two teams that discovered that the expansion of our Universe is accelerating. After Vanderbilt, I took a couple years off from academia, and was a computer engineer at Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life.
My research interests are broad at the moment, and I'm still figuring out where I'm going to focus. They include cosmology, interacting and active galaxies, and the use of virtual worlds as a platform for scientific collaboration and scientific visualization. As part of that last interest, I'm a member of MICA, a group of astronomers trying to figure out how professional astronomy can best make use of virutal worlds.
I'm also a science blogger, with my blog Galactic Interactions being a part of the Scientopia blogging collective.
Frqeuently on Saturday mornings at 10AM pacific time during the school year, I give a public-outreach astronomy lecture in Second Life. You can find information about upcoming and previous talks in this series on the Popular Talks page of the MICA website.
(Note that my CV is currently a bit out of date!)
Curriculum VitaeClasses
Astronomy Education Resources
Talk Slides
Research Papers