Hans Olofsson new head of OSO

On December 1, Hans Olofsson, Stockholm Observatory, becomes the new director of Onsala Space Observatory. In connection with this, he also becomes a visiting professor in Radio Astronomy at the Department of Radio and Space Science at Chalmers University of Technology. The appointment is for a term of five years.

Onsala Space Observatory is the Swedish National Facility for Radio Astronomy. The observatory is located 45 km south of Gothenburg, and houses a 25-m telescope for cm-wavelength observations, and a 20-m telescope for mm-wavelength observations. In addition, the facility administrates the Swedish participation in the Atacama Pathfinder EXperiment (APEX) and Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), as well as constructs detectors for these instruments. As the name implies, APEX, a 12-m telescope for submm-wavelength observations, lies in the Chilean Atacama desert, at an altitude of about 5000 meters. ALMA will be built at the same location.

Hans Olofsson will not leave Stockholm University completely. He will continue work (part time) at the Department of Astronomy, where he conducts research on the late stages of stellar evolution. He will also head a new graduate school in Astrobiology, supported by the Faculty of Science. A total of eight graduate positions will be announced, distributed between the participating departments. Besides the Department of Astronomy, these are the Department of Physics, the Department of Geology and Geochemistry, and the Department of Molecular Biology and Functional Genomics.