Contact Information:
Buff Lindau, Public Relations
802.654.2536
blindau@smcvt.edu
Astronomer/Cosmologist John M. O'Meara of Winooski has been named Saint Michael's College Assistant Professor of Physics, starting with the fall 2008 semester. Dr. O'Meara earned his doctorate in physics from the University of California, San Diego, in 2004. His dissertation is titled "Cosmology from the High Redshift Intergalactic Medium."
"I wanted to be at a small- to medium-sized liberal arts college so that I could have more interaction with students than is possible at a large research university," O'Meara said. Making clear that physics should appeal to students, O'Meara said, "Both physics and cosmology are trying to understand how the universe works-it's a fun thing to do."
First semester, Professor O'Meara will teach introductory astronomy and electrodynamics, an electricity and magnetism course for upper level students. He will make use of the college's Holcomb Observatory as a teaching resource. For research, however, he will need to fly, when possible, to Hawaii or Chile to use bigger, less weather-hampered telescopes, or book computer time with the Hubble Space Telescope.
O'Meara, who earned his bachelor's degree with distinction in physics from the University of Washington in 1997, uses telescope observations to try to figure out what the universe is made of and how it changes with time. He was an assistant professor of physics at Penn State University, Worthington Scranton Campus, from 2006 to 2008, and a teaching assistant at UCSD in 2003 and 2004. He was also a postdoctoral associate at M.I.T. Kavali Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research from 2004 to 2006.
Professor O'Meara's research interests include, among other areas, "Big Bang nucleosynthesis and light element abundances, Lyman limit and damped Lyman alpha systems, astrophysical properties of quasar absorption line systems, and galaxy-intergalactic medium interactions."
Professor O'Meara has been an author on 17 refereed journal articles published in the
Astrophysical Journal and
Astronomical Journal primarily; three review articles and three conference proceedings.
John O'Meara and his wife Amy O'Meara, a women's health practitioner, reside in Winooski with their daughter Madeleine, age 2. They also have a Newfoundland dog named Katie and two cats, Bobo and Dozie.
Saint Michael's College, founded in 1904 by the Society of St. Edmund and headed by President John J. Neuhauser, is identified by the Princeton Review as one of the nation's
Best 368 Colleges. A liberal arts, residential, Catholic college, Saint Michael's is located just outside of Burlington, Vermont, one of America's top college towns and less than two hours from Montreal. As one of only 270 institutions nationwide with a prestigious Phi Beta Kappa chapter on campus, Saint Michael's has 2,000 full-time undergraduate students, some 500 graduate students and 200 international students. In recent years Saint Michael's students and professors have received Rhodes, Woodrow Wilson, Guggenheim, Fulbright, National Science Foundation and other grants, and Saint Michael's professors have been named Vermont Professor of the Year in four of the last eight years. The college is currently listed as one of the nation's Best Liberal Arts Colleges in the 2008
U.S. News & World Report rankings.