Work Address                          Home Address

Kevin Volk                            Kevin Volk
Dept. of Physics and Astronomy        3547 Morley Trail, N.W.
University of Calgary                 Calgary, Alberta
2500 University Drive N.W.            T2M 4H5
Calgary, Alberta
T2N 1N4                               

ph. (403) 220-7423                    ph. (403) 282-5670

I am a Canadian citizen.

Education

• B.Sc. Degree (1st class honours), Astrophysics, University of Calgary, June 1981.
• M.Sc. Degree, Astrophysics, University of Calgary, August 1983. Dissertation Title: "Models Of Infrared Atmospheric Extinction". My supervisor was Dr. T. A. Clark.
• Ph.D. Degree, Astrophysics, University of Calgary, July 1986. Dissertation Title: "The Late Stages Of Stellar Evolution". My supervisor was Dr. Sun Kwok.

Scholarships and Awards:

• Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics National Post-doctoral Fellow, 1989-1991
• NSERC Postdoctoral Scholarship, 1988-1989
• NSERC Postdoctoral Scholarship, 1987-1988
• NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship, 1982-1983
• NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship, 1981-1982
• The Lieutenant Governor's Gold Medal, 1981

Professional Experience:

• ODIN Project Scientist, University of Calgary, 1995-present. This position is for support of the Canadian participation in the ODIN mission in the areas of software development, mission planning, and eventually observer support for the Canadian astronomical community.

  Collaborator: Dr. Sun Kwok.

• Post-doctoral Fellow, University of Calgary, 1991-1995. The project involved writing programs for the simulation of the data which will be obtained from EUVITA telescopes on the Spectrum-X-Gamma satellite and using these simulations to help produce data reduction software and to predict mission targets.

  Collaborator: Dr. Denis A. Leahy.

• National Post-doctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, 1989-1991.

  Collaborators: Dr. Sun Kwok (U. of Calgary), Dr. R. Stencel (U. of Colorado).

• Post-doctoral Research Fellow, Seti Institute, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California, 95035. Working on a project to characterize the infrared sky as seen by the IRAS satellite and produce a computer sky model based upon this study. 1987-1989.

  Collaborator: Dr. Martin Cohen (U. California Berkeley).

• Part-time Sessional Instructor, Department of Physics, University of Calgary 1986-1987.

Professional and Academic Societies:

• Canadian Astronomical Society
• American Astronomical Society
• International Astronomical Union

Experience:

Computing systems: I have used a variety of computers including Cray and Cyber supercomputers; VAX, Cyber, and Honywell Multics mainframes; Sun workstations and IBM PC systems. I have experience with VMS and UNIX systems. For the past 10 years I have worked almost entirely on SUN Unix and PC Linux systems

Computer software packages/languages: extensive use of FORTRAN, TEX, and C; use of IRAF, IDL, HTML programing, and X11 tools for GUI development; occasional use of postgreSQL, PGPLOT, FITS tools, AIPS, PASCAL, and BASIC. I have done extensive work on computer simulations of astronomical phenomina, mostly in FORTRAN.

Astronomical Observing: I have done some spectroscopy (Lick Observatory, Kitt Peak, McDonald Observatory, Dominion Astrophsyical Observatory) and have used the HRCam for imaging (Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope). I have done sub-millimeter molecular line observing at the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope. I have observations pending on the Hubble Space Telescope.

Areas Of Research:

• Models of Planetary Nebula structure and evolution.
• Study of dust In Planetary Nebulae and circumstellar shells.
• Infrared astronomy and spectroscopy using satellite data.
• Models of stellar mass loss and dust shell properties.

Here is a link to my List Of Publications

Here is a link to my Summary of Research Interests