Professor
MIT
Rob Simcoe studies the distribution of intergalactic and circumgalactic gas at high redshifts, approaching the epoch of reionization. He also develops optical / IR instrumentation for large telescopes. Much of his high-redshift work on absorption lines followed his construction of the FIRE infrared spectrometer for the Magellan Baade telescope. He is currently building the LLAMAS spectrometer – a 2400-fiber hyper spectral imager covering the full optical band – projected for delivery to Magellan in 2021. In a separate project, he is building a 1.2 x 1.1 degree infrared survey camera on a dedicated 1-meter robotic telescope. This instrument, which for the first time deploys InGaAs sensors in large format for astronomy, will study obscured transients, and off-axis kilonovae associated with merging neutron stars. Simcoe chairs the Science Advisory Council for the Magellan Telescopes, and is on the SAC for the GMT as a US community representative.