Alberto D. Bolatto
Professor of Astronomy, University of Maryland at College Park
I am a Professor at the Department of Astronomy of the University of Maryland at College Park. I was born and grew up in Uruguay, where I studied at the schools of Sciences (Instituto de Física) and Engineering (Instituto de Ingeniería Eléctrica) of the Universidad de la República in Montevideo.
I came to the U.S.A. in 1993 for my Ph.D., which I received from the Department of Astronomy at Boston University. Before coming to the U.S. I dabbed in theory, working on dynamics of comets with with Prof. Julio A. Fernández, and later on gravitational microlensing with Dr. Emilio E. Falco. The chief instigator of the Ph.D. was Emilio, but the ultimate responsibility belongs to my BU adviser, Prof. James Jackson, from whom I learned about radio astronomy and ISM. With him, Dr. Antony Stark, and Prof. Tom Bania I was lucky to be part of the team who worked on the Antarctic telescope AST/RO. After my dissertation I went to the Department of Astronomy at U.C. Berkeley. There I spent seven years at the Radio Astronomy Lab, working with Prof. Leo Blitz and Dr. Richard Plambeck first as a postdoc, then as a staff scientist. I moved to Maryland in 2007, got tenure in 2012, and was promoted to full professor in 2016. You can see an amusing academic family tree here.
