SPEAKER: Jay Lockman

Dr. Felix James "Jay" Lockman is the Green Bank Telescope Principle Scientist. He provides advice and assistance to the Green Bank Assistant Director, and the NRAO Director, on issues related to the scientific priorities for the GBT and its role in the wider Observatory and in the US astronomical community. He also assists in setting long-term scientific goals for Green Bank and in setting priorities for new instrumental development based on the needs of the U.S, astronomical community.

Lockman received his B.S. from Drexel University and his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Terrestrial Magnetism of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and a second postdoc at NRAO before joining the NRAO scientific staff. In 1993 he became Green Bank site director, a position he held for six years before returning to the resident scientific staff in Green Bank. He has served on numerous advisory panels for the NSF and NASA and in 2007 was elected to a three year term on the Board of Directors (the "Council") of the American Astronomical Society.

Lockman's research interests include the structure and evolution of the Milky Way, and the structure of the interstellar medium. He is currently doing studies of gas flows into and out of galaxies, using the Green Bank Telescope and other instruments to make extremely sensitive measurements of neutral hydrogen beyond the disk of the Milky Way. He recently discovered that there is a cloud of gas falling into the Milky Way that contains enough gas to make more than a million new stars like the Sun. He is also involved in collaborations with scientists using the Planck satellite to study interstellar dust and the cosmic Infrared background.