Meet the Speaker: Robert Jedicke

Professor of Astronomy, University of Hawaii

Dr. Jedicke has had professional careers in particle physics, astronomy, and software engineering. He received his Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from the University of Toronto, Canada.  After a brief try-out with the B.C. Lions professional Canadian football team in Vancouver, he held post-doctoral positions at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Batavia, Illinois, and at the University of Arizona’s Lunar & Planetary Laboratory where he worked on the Spacewatch near-Earth asteroid survey. He spent more than five years at Veeco Corporation in Tucson, Arizona, developing image analysis software for interferometers before accepting a faculty position at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy. He was the development manager of their Moving Object Processing System for the Pan-STARRS telescope on Maui that is now the world’s leading discovery system for asteroids and comets. His current research includes working with Trans Astronautica Corporation to develop techniques for mining asteroids to provide water as fuel for spacecraft missions.