Thanks a million for http'ing in here.

I, Scot Kleinman, am currently an astronomer with the Gemini Observatory at Mauna Kea, Hawaii, where I live and work in Hilo (on the Big Island of Hawaii). I work in new Instrument Development as the Instrument Program Scientist. I am currently working mostly on GHOS, the possible high resolution optical spectrograph for Gemini, and the GMOS CCD upgrades. Previously, I've worked on WFMOS, before its untimely demise, as well as supported efforts on GPI, Flamingos-2 and the GNIRS rebuild. I recently started a blog on astronomy management. I came to Gemini from the Subaru Telescope, almost next door, where I was the Instrument Division Chief. Please note the telescope is NOT named after the car company. The word subaru is the Japanese for the Pleiades constellation.

I've also worked with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) at the Apache Point Observatory in Sunspot (near Cloudcroft), New Mexico. In addition to observing, I was the Deputy Head of Survey Coordination, or Site Science Manager, responsible for overseeing night-time operations and connecting the observing/operations staff with the rest of the project. Together with SDSS colleagues, in 2004, I published the first SDSS white dwarf catalog containing over 2500 objects. Here is my page on SDSS Public Data Access. I left the SDSS just as SDSS-II was starting.

Previously, I was an Assistant Scientist at Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa where I also served as the Associate Director of Whole Earth Telescope (WET: the (original) TX WET site, the (old) IA WET site, and the current DARC WET site) Operations and was (and am continuing to be) involved in research on applying asteroseismological techniques to variable stars, most notably white dwarfs.

I have also been an Assistant Research Professor for the New Jersey Institute of Technology, working at the Big Bear Solar Observatory, previously owned and operated by Caltech (for whom I also worked at BBSO). My duties included observatory/instrument support and development along with various projects of solar research. One of my main projects was to rewrite the local Telescope Control Software at the observatory on a Linux box after the previous controller, a PDP-11, died.

Prior to working at Big Bear, I was a Research Engineer Scientist Associate at the Astronomy Department, University of Texas, Austin Texas, where I also did my graduate work. I continue to be involved with the Texas group and others and around the world in stellar astronomy as well. Professionally, my interests are in the white dwarfs and the clues they provide us on stellar evolution and Galactic/Universal history.

You can contact me here.

I also have other interests besides astronomy. Enjoy!