Eliot Quataert

Professor of Astronomy & Physics


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

eliot{at}astron.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, and galaxies. 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 the Theoretical Astrophysics Center at UC Berkeley.  I am also a member of the Center for Multiscale Plasma Dynamics, a DOE funded science center.  Some of my research on turbulence in collisionless plasmas is described here.

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 ....

Talks

Gamma-ray Bursts from the Birth of Magnetars      Starbursts and AGN Fueling

Accretion in the Galactic Center                              Galactic Winds and "Feedback"

Kinetic-MHD Applied to Astrophysical Plasmas    A Public Talk on Black Holes

Jobs/Students

Postdoctoral:   The Theoretical Astrophysics Center at UC Berkeley has several prize postdoctoral fellowships; the CMPD does as well.

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

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

Teaching

Astro 7A:  Introduction to Astrophysics

Astro 160:  Stellar Physics (Fall 2008)

Astro 252:  Stellar Structure and Evolution (Fall 2008)

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.