Trinh X. Thuan, Professor

Personal Website: http://www.trinhxuanthuan.com/ Email: txt@virginia.edu Phone: (434) 924-4894 Fax: (434) 924-3104 Office: 253 Astronomy Building Address:    Department of Astronomy    PO Box 400325    Charlottesville, VA 22904-4325

Curriculum Vitae Ph.D., California Institute of Technology Postdoc, Princeton University Presently: Professor, University of Virginia Position at Saclay Research Interests Galaxy Evolution Chemical evolution of the universe Compact blue dwarf galaxies Recent Research Assistants Former: Michael Fanelli (Ph.D., 1991) Ricky Patterson (Ph.D., 1995) Franz Bauer (Ph.D., 2000) Courses Recently Taught Astronomy 121 Astronomy 124 Publications Link to publications

My primary research involves studying very young dwarf galaxies in the local universe. These can be used as nearby laboratories for studying galaxy formation processes and for improving the accuracy in the measurements of the primordial Helium abundance to constrain better Big Bang nucleosynthesis and the amount of baryonic matter in the universe. I plan to develop a new technique to search for these very metal-deficient objects at look-back times of about 10 billion years (i.e going back in time 2/3 of the age of the universe), using the new large 10-m class telescopes now beginning to be operational, such as the European VLT (Very Large Telescope) and the American Gemini Telescope.

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