Dr. Stanimir Metchev has accepted our offer to join the Department as its
newest faculty member, and begins his appointment as an Associate Professor
in July 2013. We have nominated Stan for a Canada Research Chair Tier 2 position in Extrasolar Planets.

Stan comes to us from Stony Brook University, New York, where he has
been an Assistant Professor since 2008. He has already built a large and
active astronomy research group at Stony Brook and we look forward to the same at Western. Stan’s research encompasses the study of the demographics
and atmospheres (including clouds and weather phenomena) of extrasolar
planets and brown dwarfs, as well as the study of circumstellar debris disks, the extrasolar analogs of the solar system main asteroid belt and
Kuiper belt.

Stan brings with him an established network of international collaborations, including at NASA JPL, the NASA Ames Research Center, The University of Arizona, the Max-Planck Institute for Astronomy Heidelberg in Germany, and the Universidad de Valparaiso in Chile. He is currently leading the “Weather on Other Worlds” international collaboration, which has been awarded at least 10% of all available time on the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2012 and 2013. Stan looks forward to take full advantage of Canada’s access to international
telescope facilities, such as the Gemini telescopes, the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, and in the future also the James Webb Space Telescope and the Thirty Meter Telescope.

Stan’s appointment will undoubtedly bring additional international visibility
to the research program in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the
Centre for Planetary Science and Exploration, and strengthen our ties with
NASA and other academic institutions in Ontario, in Canada, and beyond.