Keith Hawkins, Ph.D.

Keith Hawkins is an incoming postdoctoral research fellow in astronomy at Columbia University. He received his B.S. in astrophysics with minors in mathematics and African studies from the Honors Tutorial College at Ohio University in 2013 and is completing his Ph.D. in astronomy at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge, under the guidance of Gerry Gilmore and Paula Jofre.

His research interests are in galactic archaeology, with the goal of revealing the formation and evolution of our galaxy through detailed chemical and dynamical studies of individual stars. His doctoral research focused on dissecting the Milky Way using stellar spectroscopy. He specializes in detailed chemical abundance analysis, data mining of large surveys, and low- and high-resolution spectroscopy. At Columbia, he will continue to be an active member of large spectroscopic surveys, and will make use of the wealth of data (both in kinematics and in chemistry) in those surveys not only to better understand the structure of our galaxy but also to expand his research to other nearby systems.