Donald Schneider Appointed as Head of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Donald P. Schneider, Distinguished Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics, has been appointed as head of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Penn State's Eberly College of Science. Schneider succeeds Lawrence W. Ramsey, who has served as head of the department since 2003.
Schneider, whose primary research interest is observational cosmology, perhaps is best known for three of his accomplishments: He developed a new technique to measure distances to galaxies; he was the first to detect Comet Halley as it approached Earth in 1982, at a greater distance than any comet had ever been detected up to that time; and he has broken his own and others' records numerous times in the discovery of the most-distant known object in the universe.
Schneider now is particularly interested in finding and determining the properties of distant quasars, which are thought to be massive black holes that are swallowing stars as they venture to close to the black hole. He uses optical telescopes as time machines to view the distant past, when the universe was only a small fraction of its current size and age.
For the past two decades, much of his research effort has been devoted to the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, which is a large international effort to produce a comprehensive digital map of the sky. Schneider has served as the chairman of the quasar science group and as the science publications coordinator for the project. The first two phases of the survey, completed in July 2008, identified 100,000 quasars -- the most luminous objects known in the universe -- and have measured the distances to over a million galaxies. During the third phase of the survey, which is ongoing until May 2014, Schneider is serving two roles: as the project's survey coordinator and as a member of its Management Council. Since 2004, Schneider also has served as the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Scientist.
In 2006, Schneider received a C.I. Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching, which is sponsored by the Eberly College of Science Student Council and Alumni Society and is presented annually to faculty members and instructors in the Eberly College of Science who demonstrate a record of excellence both in teaching and in their interactions with students. For the past several years, Schneider has taught a year-long introductory course for astronomy majors and has been active in placing students in research programs throughout the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics.
Schneider received a bachelor's degree in physics and mathematics, with highest distinction, from the University of Nebraska in 1976 and, in 2002, he received the University's Alumni Achievement Award. He received a doctoral degree in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 1982 and was a research fellow there from 1982 to 1985. From 1985 to 1994, he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. He joined the faculty at Penn State in 1994 as an associate professor of astronomy and astrophysics, was promoted to professor in 1999, and was named a Distinguished Professor in 2008.