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Virginia Trimble Virginia Trimble is Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine and the oldest member of the department still on active duty. Virginia sponsored the Observational Astronomy Workshops in: 2013 & 2014 (in honor of Mary Lea & C. Donald Shane); 2015 (in honor of Rudolph L. Minkowski); 2016 (in honor of George H. Herbig); 2017 (in honor of Robert P. Kraft); 2018 (in honor of Anna Estelle Glancy & Emma Phoebe Waterman Hass); 2019 (in honor of Virginia Frances Farmer Trimble and Roy Stanley Farmer); 2020 (in honor of Margaret Burbidge); 2021 (in honor of Guido Münch & Lodewijk Woltjer); 2022 (in honor of Sophia Levy McDonald); 2023Q2 (in honor of Maud Worcester Makemson); 2023Q4 (in honor of Daniel Magnes Popper); 2024Q2 (in honor of Donna D. Elbert); 2024Q4 (in honor of Armin O. Leuschner). Virginia is a graduate of Hollywood High School, UCLA, and Caltech (PhD 1968) and holds an honorary M.A. degree from the University of Cambridge (UK) and dottora honoris causa from the University of Valencia (Spain). She has been involved in governance in AAS, APS, IAU, IUPAP, PBK, Sigma Xi, ASP and some other organizations and is currently interested in the structure and evolution of stars, galaxies, and the universe, and of the communities of scientists who study them. As a student at CalTech, Trimble modelled for Richard P. Feynman's artwork. For 16 years, Trimble read every astronomical paper published in 23 journals. Preceded by Vera Rubin, Trimble was the second woman to be granted research time with the 200-inch Hale telescope on Palomar mountain. Since the 1960s, as the spouse of gravitational wave astronomy pioneer Joseph Weber, Virginia has been integral to the development and fruition of this major new field, as acknowleged during the 2016-02-11 NSF press conference announcing the first direct detection of gravitational waves by the LIGO instrument. See also Weber and Trimble, chapter 9 of Janna Levin's (2016) book: Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space and among the inspiring autobiographies in Trimble & Weintraub (2022): The Sky is For Everyone. |
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Elinor Gates Elinor is a staff astronomer at Lick Observatory specializing in laser guide star adaptive optics and near infrared camera instrumentation and observations. She received her Ph.D. in Physics/Astronomy from the University of New Mexico in 1998. Her current research interests are studying quasars and their host galaxies. |
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Paul Lynam Paul is a staff astronomer at Lick Observatory. An amateur astronomer since childhood, after UK-based undergraduate studies, master's research and a Ph.D. in astrophysics (2000), he spent three years at the Max-Planck-Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics (MPE, Germany). Having attended research observatories worldwide, he then joined the European Southern Observatory (ESO, Germany) and two years later, relocated to Chile, supporting operations of the Very Large Telescope (VLT). He continued as a VLT operations astronomer until late 2010. His research includes giant galaxies, clusters of galaxies, large-scale structure and "cosmic flows." |
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Jon Rees Jon is a staff astronomer at Lick Observatory. He received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Exeter in 2016, focussed on observations of young star clusters. He completed a joint postdoc position at the University of Arizona/UC San Diego, followed by a stint as observatory manager at New Mexico State University before joining Lick. His research interests cover the evolution of young stars, low-mass stars in globular clusters, and brown dwarfs. |
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Patrick Maloney Pat Maloney has been actively involved with Astronomy since he ground an 8-inch mirror and built his first telescope as a high school freshman. He has operated telescopes for public viewing programs at various colleges and universities. He currently teaches astronomy labs at Santa Clara University. For many years, Pat has also operated the 36-inch and 40-inch telescopes for Lick Observatory’s summer evening programs. |
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Vivian U Vivian U is an observational astronomer at the California Institute of Technology IPAC and the University of California, Irvine. She received her bachelor’s degree in Astrophysics from Caltech and her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. She is currently a co-chair of the Habitable Worlds Observatory AGN Working Group and of the NASA Cosmic Origins AGN Science Interest Group Leadership Council. Vivian was a recipient of the 2020 AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, and was named a National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science Fellow in 2019. She was featured on PBS NOVA in the 2023 Episode "New Eye on the Universe", and was a speaker at the 2024 TEDxManhattanBeach event. Having been classically trained at UH's Maunakea Observatory as a graduate student and at UCO's Lick Observatory as a postdoctoral fellow, Vivian highly values the hands-on education a graduate student receives at a ground-based observatory. She also believes that solid scientific writing skills are an integral part of being an effective scientist communicating one's ideas and results to others. Therefore, as part of her National Science Foundation AST Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grant (2408820), Vivian augments the Observational Astronomy Workshop at Lick Observatory by increasing graduate student participation and adding a new science communication module to enrich the education and professional development of the student participants. |
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