Paul Kalas
Assistant Adjunct Professor of Astronomy
PhD 1996 (Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii)
Campus address and phone:
425 Campbell Hall
(510) 642-8285
Email:
Website:
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~kalas/
Specialty areas:
Circumstellar matter around main sequence and pre-main sequence stars, exosolar
planets, trans-Neptunian objects, stellar and planetary dynamics, optical and
near-infrared coronagraphy, high contrast imaging with adaptive optics and
the Hubble Space Telescope, mid-infrared and sub-millimeter imaging.
Research projects:
Paul Kalas is an observational astronomer focusing on high-contrast, high-resolution imaging of dusty disks around nearby stars. His research programs primarily utilize the Hubble Space Telescope, Keck Observatory and the Very Large Telescope, with additional programs conducted with Gemini Observatory, the Spitzer Space Telescope, Lick Observatory, the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope, and the Very Large Baseline Array. Among his accomplishments are the optical discoveries of debris belts surrounding the nearby stars Fomalhaut and AU Microscopii. Kalas' coronagraphic observations of nearby stars represent the largest database of its kind.
Biography:
Paul Kalas was born in New York to George and Maria Kavallinis, who immigrated to the United States from Heraklion, Crete. He studied Astronomy and Physics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and earned a Ph.D with astronomer David Jewitt at the University of Hawaii. Before coming to Berkeley he worked as a post doctoral scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore. Paul Kalas lives with his wife Aspasia Gika and daughters Maria-Nikoleta and Natalia in Berkeley, California.