One of Professor Reichart’s undergraduate students, while using remote technology in Chapel Hill to operate a telescope in Chile, documented the oldest stellar explosion ever detected in the universe. The event made international news and resulted in a major publication in Nature, with the student and another graduate student as primary authors.

 

I divide my time between research, teaching, and outreach. At the moment, my research group has a postdoctoral student, four graduate students, and four undergraduate students. We’re building six telescopes in the Chilean Andes, called PROMPT. These telescopes’ primary purpose is to observe distant cosmic explosions when they are only seconds old. Since this is faster than humans can respond, we have also been writing a computer program, called Skynet, to control the telescopes. Skynet has become so popular that telescopes from all across the United States are now joining Skynet.

 

This project is fun and exciting, but also a lot of work. Everyone in my group knows this and gives 150 percent effort. My primary responsibilities in the group are fundraising, management, and mentoring. Much of my time is spent preparing grant proposals, initially to purchase hardware, but now more for salary support. So far, I have raised about $2 million. Management also requires a great deal of my time, but management style is equally important. Given how hard my students work, and how much we are trying to accomplish in a short amount of time, high morale and enthusiasm are key.

 

I also take mentoring very seriously. After my students have given me their all for a few years, I want to make sure that I have repaid them by preparing them for the next stage of their careers. I have only been here a few years and consequently have only graduated three undergraduates, but I placed them all in top astronomy and astrophysics graduate programs.

 

Teaching also takes a great deal of my time, particularly this semester. Previously, I taught the introduction to astronomy for non-science majors course, which typically enrolls 100 students. However, this semester I am teaching a graduate course on white dwarfs, neutron stars, and black holes. Since this is the first time I have taught this course, it is taking a great deal of my time – about 20 hours a week – but appears to be going well.

 

PROMPT is now available to every undergraduate institution in the state with an astronomer, and I hire two undergraduates from these institutions each summer to further strengthen ties. PROMPT is also available to every high school in the state through Morehead Planetarium. Each summer for the past 14 years, I have also taken 15 students, selected competitively from a national pool, to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, W.V., where I teach them radio astronomy using a 40-foot diameter telescope. And finally, I give about a dozen talks about astronomy to the public each year as well.