Robert J. Thornton, Jr. Assistant Professor Department of Physics West Chester University

I was an undergraduate at Lehigh University, where I received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering. The engineering program at Lehigh, although quite rigorous, was truly an incredible experience and prepared me well for things to come. In my later years at Lehigh I became interested and active in astronomy. So, after completing my engineering requirements, I stayed at Lehigh to get a B.S. in Physics in preparation for a graduate program in astronomy.

I received my Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Hawaii in 2002. During my time in Hawaii I worked on instruments for a number of different telescopes, including the 8-meter Gemini telescope at the summit of Mauna Kea on the Big Island and the Air Force AEOS telescope atop Haleakala on Maui. Due to its location and terrain, Hawaii is the best place in the Northern hemisphere for astronomy and has telescopes from countries all over the world.

I joined the faculty at West Chester in the fall of 2008. Right before coming to West Chester, I was at the University of Pennsylvania working on the 6-meter Atacama Cosmology Telescope telescope and its commissioning camera, MBAC. The telescope and camera are are now working together at the site in the Atacama Desert in Chile at an altitude of 17,400 ft (5290 meters), looking at the cosmic microwave background and searching for galaxy clusters at millimeter wavelengths. I am still heavily involved with that project.