Chris Smith Named Director of Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory

R. Chris Smith has been selected as the next director of Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO). He will take up the directorship in November. Smith succeeds Alistair Walker, who will return to the scientific staff of CTIO after five years as director. Smith brings to his new position many years of experience with NOAO and CTIO. In his previous role at NOAO, Smith was co-manager and, most recently, head of the NOAO-wide Data Products Program during a period of extensive development in virtual observatories. He has also led a major southern-sky survey of the Magellanic Clouds.

A co-recipient of the 2007 Gruber Cosmology Prize for his part in one of two teams that announced the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the Universe in 1998, Smith first joined CTIO as a postdoctoral researcher after earning a Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1991. He spent three years at CTIO, followed by three years at the University of Michigan before returning to CTIO as a staff astronomer in 1998.

Smith is the principal investigator of the Magellanic Cloud Emission Line Survey (MCELS), which was carried out through the NOAO Survey Program. MCELS mapped out the interstellar medium of the Large and Small Magellanic Clouds in the emission lines of hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur to improve our understanding of the interactions between stars and the gas and dust that surround them.