Keivan Guadalupe Stassun (born July 1972) is an American physicist and astronomer in the field of

exoplanet An exoplanet or extrasolar planet is a planet outside the Solar System. The first possible evidence of an exoplanet was noted in 1917 but was not recognized as such. The first confirmation of detection occurred in 1992. A different planet, init ...

s. He is a physics professor at Vanderbilt University and an adjunct professor at

Fisk University Fisk University is a private historically black liberal arts college in Nashville, Tennessee. It was founded in 1866 and its campus is a historic district listed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1930, Fisk was the first Africa ...

, institutions at which he oversees and co-directs the Fisk-Vanderbilt Masters-to-Ph.D Bridge Program. Stassun has been an activist promoting the integration of underrepresented groups in the fields of STEM, especially math and science through research, outreach and teaching.

Family life and education

Stassun was born to a Mexican mother and an Iranian father who left when he was an infant. He lived in Venice, CA until age seven, when his mother and stepfather married and moved to the

San Fernando Valley The San Fernando Valley, known locally as the Valley, is an urbanized valley in Los Angeles County, California. Located to the north of the Los Angeles Basin, it contains a large portion of the City of Los Angeles, as well as unincorporated ar ...

where he grew up. He was identified as "high IQ" and was recommended for a gifted magnet program: Sherman Oaks Center for Enriched Studies, where he went for both middle and high school. During his high school years he participated in a number of activities in the fine arts, sports, speech and debate, and newspapers and yearbook, all while graduating second in his class. He first attended the Naval Academy for a year, undergoing basic training on Treasure Island, but gave it up. He then attended University of California, Berkeley as a Chancellor Scholar where he studied astronomy under the tutelage of

Gibor Basri Gibor Basri is an African-American astrophysicist, now Professor Emeritus in the Astronomy department at U.C. Berkeley. His research focused on stellar magnetic activity, star formation, and low mass stars and brown dwarfs. He was also the foundin ...

. After Berkeley, he moved on to the University of Wisconsin to do his graduate work under the guidance of Bob Mathieu. At Wisconsin, his ideas about the importance of combining scholarly practices in research, teaching, and outreach began to crystallize. In addition to carrying out his thesis research, he also became active in math/science education for minorities in the local schools, and he developed an astronomy outreach program ( Scopes for Schools) which provides teachers with resources and training for teaching astronomy. Currently, Stassun serves as chair in the exoplanet science team of the Vanderbilt Initiative in Data-intensive Astrophysics (VIDA), which he helped found. The VIDA is a big data-enabling pilot-program from major astronomical surveys. He currently lives in Nashville, Tennessee with his wife and 2 sons

Awards and recognition

* 2004 – National Science Foundation CAREER Award * 2006 – Cottrell Scholar Award from Research Corporation *2007 – Ford Foundation Fellow *2014 – Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring (PAESMEM) *2015 – TREE (Transformational Research and Excellence in Education) Award from Research Corporation *2016 – Fellow,

American Physical Society The American Physical Society (APS) is a not-for-profit membership organization of professionals in physics and related disciplines, comprising nearly fifty divisions, sections, and other units. Its mission is the advancement and diffusion of k ...

* 2018 –

American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...

(AAAS) Mentor Award * 2019 – Cottrell Plus Impact Award from Research Corporation * 2020 - Elected a Legacy Fellow of the

American Astronomical Society The American Astronomical Society (AAS, sometimes spoken as "double-A-S") is an American society of professional astronomers and other interested individuals, headquartered in Washington, DC. The primary objective of the AAS is to promote the adv ...

in 2020.

Selected publications

* Stassun, Keivan Guadalupe (2000–07). "The Connection Between Rotation, Circumstellar Disks, and Accretion Among Low-Mass Pre-Main-Sequence Stars" * Stassun, Keivan G.; Mathieu, Robert (2002–08). "A Spectroscopic and Photometric Study of Newly Discovered Pre-Main- Sequence Eclipsing Binaries in Orion"

References

External links

Website

American Physical Society

AAAS Mentorship Award
{{DEFAULTSORT:Stassun, Keivan 1972 births Living people University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Vanderbilt University faculty 21st-century American physicists Fellows of the American Physical Society Fellows of the American Astronomical Society