Harold Brown Professor of Physics, Emeritus
California Institute of Technology
Tom Soifer has been an infrared astronomer for nearly 5 decades, with substantial involvement in both space and ground-based facilities. He was a member of the science team for the IRAS satellite and a member of the Infrared Spectrometer (IRS) science team on the Spitzer Space Telescope. He was co-PI for the Near Infared Camera (NIRC) instrument for the Keck 1 telescope and for the NIRC2 camera – diffraction limited imager – on the Keck 2 telescope. Most recently he was co-PI for the Near Infared Echelle Spectrometer (NIRES) for the Keck 2 telescope. He has been the Director of the Spitzer Science Center since 1997 and is currently the chairman of the board of directors of the California Association for Research in Astronomy (CARA) that operates the W.M.Keck Observatory, and a member of the board of the Thirty Meter Telescope International Observatory (TIO).