Assistant Professor, School of Physics and Astronomy and Minnesota Institute for Astrophysics
Prof. Patrick Kelly focuses on addressing the nature of dark matter and populations of luminous stars at high redshift through gravitational lensing at extreme magnification, and the nature of supernova explosions. He is the PI of a large program using the Hubble Space Telescope named "Flashlights" that is acquiring the deepest-ever imaging of six galaxy-cluster gravitational lenses. These data, which will arrive over the next year and a half, will be used to detect the microlensing events of individual stars in galaxies at lookback times of more than half the age of the universe. He is constructing a prototype optical telescope on the St. Paul campus to respond to the electromagnetic counterparts of LIGO merger events.