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Faculty Directory

Department Chair: Jonathan Fortney Department Manager: Alyssa Danielli
Vice Chair: Brant Robertson Graduate Advisor: Brandon Day
Graduate Program Director: Andrew Skemer Department Assistant: Kali Lucas
Undergraduate Program Director: Connie Rockosi Astronomy Program Coordinator: Lani Skelton
Kevin A Bundy
  • Title
    • Assistant Professor
  • Division Physical & Biological Sciences Division
  • Department
    • Astronomy & Astrophysics Department
  • Phone
    831-459-3539
  • Email
  • Website
  • Office Location
    • Interdisciplinary Sciences Building, 361
    • ISB 361
  • Mail Stop UCO / Lick Observatory
  • Mailing Address
    • 1156 High Street
    • Santa Cruz CA 95064

Summary of Expertise

I am the Principal Investigator for the Fiber Optic Broadband Optical Spectrograph (FOBOS), a new facility-class instrument concept for Keck Observatory.  I am also the founder and Principal Investigator of the MaNGA Survey (Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory), one of three core surveys of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey-IV project.

Research Interests

I am an observational astronomer specializing in mapping the distribution, properties, and internal structure of galaxies across large cosmic volumes in order to address key questions about their formation and assembly history.  My work combines statistical analyses of "Big Data" survey programs with targeted observations from premier facilities, especially Keck Observatory.  I am particularly interested in the mechanisms that shut down star formation in galaxies and regulate their growth and assembly.  As a leader of instrumentation projects for large telescopes, I am also working in the field of "Astrophotonics" to develop new tools that can dramatically enhance the capabilities of future instruments. 

Biography, Education and Training

Before moving to Santa Cruz in 2016, I was an Assitant Professor at the University of Tokyo's Kavli Institute for the Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (Kavli IPMU).  I obtained my Ph.D. at Caltech in 2006 and then moved to a Reinhardt Fellowship at the U. of Toronto and a Hubble Fellowship at UC Berkeley.

Honors, Awards and Grants

Tinsley Visiting Scholar, UT Austin, 2014

Robert J. Trumpler Award, "for a recent PhD in North America considered unusually important to astronomy", 2009

Dorothea Klumpkea Roberts Prize, Department of Astronomy, UC Berkeley, 2000

Teaching Interests

Galaxy evolution; Astronomical data analysis and methods; 2D spectroscopy