Nick Indriolo

Nick is an ESA/AURA Astronomer working on the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph (COS) branch in support of HST. His primary focus is to understand and improve the integral non-linearity (geometric) and gain dependent (walk) corrections for the COS FUV detectors. He is also involved in the commissioning activities for new COS lifetime positions, and in supporting COS observations for the user community.

This is Dr. Indriolo's second appointment at STScI, having previously worked as a Support Scientist, also on the COS branch. During the interim, he worked as a Project Assistant Professor in support of the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan. Prior to his initial position at STScI, Nick worked as a postdoctoral researcher with Ted Bergin at the University of Michigan, and as an assistant research scientist with David Neufeld at Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Indriolo's research interests are centered around the use of spectroscopic observations to better understand conditions in the interstellar medium (ISM). By observing absorption from small molecular ions he has placed constraints on the cosmic-ray ionization rate in our Galaxy, and, more recently, on the ionization rates in submillimeter bright galaxies at z>2. He also uses observations of abundant species like CO and H2O to probe the physical conditions in disks around high mass protostars, with an eye toward multi-wavelength studies in the infrared and submillimeter regimes.
 

Education:

PhD in Astronomy, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
BS in Astronomy, Case Western Reserve University

Science Interests:

• Cosmic rays
• Interstellar chemistry
• High mass protostars

Research Topics:  Star Formation;  Histories, and Evolution; Interstellar Medium;  Astrochemistry; Chemical Abundances

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-8533-6440