picture 

    Eliot Quataert

    Professor of Astronomy & Physics

    eliot{at}astro.berkeley.edu

    UC Berkeley
    Astronomy Department
    601 Campbell Hall
    Berkeley, CA 94720

    Phone: 510-642-3792

    Fax: 510-642-3411




Research

I am a theoretical astrophysicist with interests in a wide variety of problems, including black holes, high energy astrophysics, plasma astrophysics, and galaxy formation. Current areas of research include accretion onto black holes, supernovae explosions and gamma-ray bursts, the formation and evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes, and the dynamics of gas in starbursts, active galactic nuclei, and galaxy clusters.

I am the director of Berkeley's Theoretical Astrophysics Center.

My publications can be found on the web here at the  astro-ph website or here at the Astrophysics Data System (ADS) website.

A copy of my curriculum vitae is available here.

Here is a review on Black Hole Accretion for Science magazine.

Although I greatly enjoy theoretical physics research, I have a confession ....

(I am not yet a member of this dept ...)

Talks

Feedback from Radiation Pressure during Galaxy Formation
Short-Duration Gamma-ray Bursts
New Forms of Convection in Galaxy Cluster Plasmas
The Transient Revolution                                       
The Heating and Acceleration of the Solar Wind  
The FIR-Radio Correlation & Gamma-ray Emission from Star-Forming Galaxies
Gamma-ray Bursts from the Birth of Magnetars    
Accretion in the Galactic Center                             
A Public Talk on Black Holes                             

Jobs/Students

Postdoctoral:   The Theoretical Astrophysics Center at UC Berkeley has several prize postdoctoral fellowships.

Graduate & Undergraduate:  I am happy to talk with interested students at any time.

Previous Undergraduate Students:  Naveed Ahmad (now working for an NGO)

Current Graduate Students:  Linda Strubbe, Jackson Debuhr, Josh Burkart, Josh Shiode, Mike McCourt, Siva Darbha

Previous Graduate Students:  Prateek Sharma (Berkeley), Mike Boylan-Kolchin (MPA), Brian Metzger (Princeton)

Postdocs I am currently collaborating with:  Prateek Sharma, Nevin Weinberg, Tony Piro, Ian Parrish, Phil Hopkins

Postdocs I have previously collaborated with:  Todd Thompson (OSU), Bryan Johnson (Livermore), Greg Howes (Iowa),
                                                                          Phil Chang (CITA), Niccolo Bucciantini (Nordita)

Teaching

Astro 7A:  Introduction to Astrophysics

Astro 160:  Stellar Physics

Astro 252:  Stellar Structure and Evolution

Astro 202:  Astrophysical Gas Dynamics

Astro 250:   Special Topics in Astrophysics:  Accretion Disks

Astro 292:  Special Topics in Astrophysics:  The Formation and Evolution of Massive Black Holes

Astro 24:  Black Holes:  The Science Behind the Science Fiction

Personal

I was born in Santa Monica, California on June 19, 1973, lived for almost 12 years in Houston,Texas, and spent my high school years in Vestal, New York (upstate near the border between NY and PA).  I received my B.S. in Physics from MIT in 1995 (carrying out research with Pawan Kumar) and my Ph. D. in Astronomy from Harvard University  in 1999 (under the supervision of Ramesh Narayan).   I was a postdoc in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study for 2 years before coming to Berkeley in 2001.

I  live in Berkeley with Bethany Hoffman.