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Research Associate Professor of Astronomy, Wesleyan University

Professor Kilgard is an astrophysicist whose background is in high-energy astrophysics. Prior to his move to Wesleyan, he spent almost a decade at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, where he worked on the Chandra X-ray Observatory–one of NASA's Great Observatories, and the X-ray counterpart to the Hubble Space Telescope. Professor Kilgard researches black holes in nearby galaxies with an emphasis on intermediate-mass black holes–objects with masses of hundreds to tens of thousands of times the mass of our Sun. The origins of these enigmatic objects are unclear, having only been definitively detected in the last few years, but they may provide an important clue to understanding the formation of the supermassive black holes that lie at the centers of most or all galaxies. His lectures cover a wide variety of astronomical topics, including black holes and galaxies, X-ray astronomy, historical astronomy, and astro-statistics.

Experience

  • –present
    Research Associate Professor of Astronomy, Wesleyan University