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Robin Ciardullo

Robin Ciardullo — Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics — Faculty
Office: 525 Davey Laboratory
Address: 0525 Davey Laboratory University Park, PA 16802 US
+1 814 865 6601
Robin Ciardullo

Robin Ciardullo is a observational astronomer whose interests range
from cosmology and the history of the universe to local phenomena
such as planetary nebulae and wide binary stars. Along the way, he
has worked on a variety of issues, including the large-scale structure
of the universe, the distribution of dark matter in and around galaxies,
the extragalactic distance scale, and the chemical evolution of nearby
systems. His current programs including measuring the physical properties
of high-redshift emission-line galaxies, improving our understanding of
the evolution of post-asymptotic giant branch stars, and re-examining
the use of the planetary nebula luminosity function for extragalactic
distance measurements.

Robin Ciardullo was an undergraduate at Yale University,
received his Ph.D. in Astronomy from UCLA in 1986, and has been a member
of the faculty of Penn State University since 1990. In 1992, he won
the National Science Foundation's Young Investigator Award, and
he has authored (or co-authored) over 180 refereed publications. He has
served on a number of national committees, including the US Gemini Telescope
Science Advisory Committee, the Users Committee for the US National
Optical Astronomy Observatories (Chair), and the NSF Program Review
Committee for NOAO. He is currently a professor at Penn State University,
the Observing Manager for the Hobby Eberly Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX),
and a member of all four of the HETDEX science working groups.

Publications
  1. Brian Davis, Howard Bond, Michael Siegel, Robin Ciardullo “A Census of Above-horizontal-branch Stars in Galactic Globular Clusters.” 926 1 (2022) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac4224
  2. Dustin Davis, Karl Gebhardt, Erin Mentuch Cooper, John Chisholm, Robin Ciardullo, Daniel Farrow, Steven Finkelstein, Caryl Gronwall, Eric Gawiser, Gary Hill, Ulrich Hopp, Donghui Jeong, Martin Landriau, Chenxu Liu, Maja Lujan Niemeyer, Donald Schneider, Jan Snigula, Sarah Tuttle “Detection of Lyman Continuum from 3.0 < z < 3.5 Galaxies in the HETDEX Survey.” 920 2 (2021) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac1598
  3. Matthew Stevans, Steven Finkelstein, Lalitwadee Kawinwanichakij, Isak Wold, Casey Papovich, Rachel Somerville, L. Yung, Sydney Sherman, Robin Ciardullo, Romeel Davé, Jonathan Florez, Caryl Gronwall, Shardha Jogee “The NEWFIRM HETDEX Survey: Photometric Catalog and a Conservative Sample of Massive Quiescent Galaxies at z = 3-5 over 17.5 deg^2 in the SHELA Field.” 921 1 (2021) doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac0cf6
  4. Daniel Farrow, Ariel Sánchez, Robin Ciardullo, Erin Cooper, Dustin Davis, Maximilian Fabricius, Eric Gawiser, Henry Grasshorn Gebhardt, Karl Gebhardt, Gary Hill, Donghui Jeong, Eiichiro Komatsu, Martin Landriau, Chenxu Liu, Shun Saito, Jan Snigula, Isak Wold “Correcting correlation functions for redshift-dependent interloper contamination.” 507 3 (2021) doi:10.1093/mnras/stab1986

Robin Ciardullo's research group


IGC members directory
Photo Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Olivia Curtis Olivia Curtis Postdoc Astronomy ocurtis@psu.edu N/A 417A Davey Laboratory IGC Cosmic Surveys
Gooderham McCormick Gooderham McCormick Graduate Student Astronomy gum66@psu.edu +1 814 865 0419 532 C Davey Laboratory IGC Multimessenger Astrophysics

Robin Ciardullo's former group members


IGC members directory
Photo Name Role Affiliations Email Phone Office Centers Research topics
Will Bowman Will Bowman Graduate Student Astronomy bowman@psu.edu +1 814 863 9342 520 Davey Laboratory IGC Cosmic Surveys
About our wordmark
Monica Rincon Ramirez

The IGC wordmark was created by Monica Rincon Ramirez while she was a graduate student at the Institute. Monica enjoys drawing new connections between fundamental theory and observations. Her graduate work included general relativity, loop quantum gravity, and quantum fields in cosmological backgrounds; her thesis focused on effective quantum corrections to gravitational phenomena from spinfoams and applications to cosmology. She received her PhD in 2024.

The wordmark symbolizes the scope of research at the IGC. The base represents quantum gravity, evoking the quantum geometrical picture from spinfoams and loop quantum gravity — approaches studied at the Center for Fundamental Theory. The middle shows galaxies embedded in a smooth surface characteristic of spacetime in general relativity and the larger physical scales studied at the Center for Theoretical and Observational Cosmology. The top curves to an extreme representing a supermassive black hole accompanied by an energetic jet, with a binary black hole pair nearby — the high-energy phenomena studied at the Center for Multimessenger Astrophysics.