Christian Howard (USRA)
Postdoctoral Fellow
choward@sofia.usra.edu

Dr. Christian D. Howard received his Ph.D. in 2008 from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. His thesis focused on the I band spectroscopy of Milky Way bulge giants, characterizing the radial velocity dynamics of the bulge in order to constrain the currently available Galaxy formation models. He was hired by SOFIA in July 2009, and is currently working with Dr. Göran Sandell as part of the Gas in Protoplanetary Systems (GASPS) team, an open time key program for HERSCHEL. GASPS is a systematic survey of gas in circumstellar disks over the critical transition from gas-rich protoplanetary through to gas-poor debris, utilizing the PACS instrument on HERSCHEL. Christian's SOFIA duties include being a member of the FORCAST calibration group.