Robert Kennicutt is the Principal Investigator of the SINGS project. He is a Professor of Astronomy at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona. He also is the current Editor-in-Chief of The Astrophysical Journal. His main scientific research interests are in observational extragalactic astronomy, including observations of star formation in galaxies, galaxy evolution, and the cosmological distance scale. His main role in the SINGS project is to coordinate the overall team activities, and those of the large SINGS group based in Tucson. He also is leading projects to obtain ancillary optical spectra and HST infrared imaging of the SINGS sample. He will use the SINGS data to study the large-scale star formation properties of the local galaxy population, and to better understand the physical processes that trigger and regulate star formation in galaxies.
George J. Bendo is currently a postdoctoral research assistant working under Robert C. Kennicutt at Steward Observatory. He finished his Ph.D. work on an ISO survey of star formation and dust temperatures in nearby spiral galaxies at the University of Hawaii in 2002. His current research interests include extragalactic star formation and the spectral energy distributions of dust emission from nearby galaxies. He will be responsible for processing MIPS data for the SINGS legacy program.
Caroline Bot is a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology, working with George Helou. Her Ph.D. (at CDS in Strasbourg and IAS in Orsay -- France) was dedicated to the interstellar medium and the dust grain cycle in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Her main scientific interest is the understanding of dust emission in low metallicity galaxies.
Brent Buckalew is currently a postdoc at the California Institute of Technology working with George Helou. His main scientific interest is in the study of the composition and morphology of the interstellar medium around young (0-10 Myr) star clusters. He is excited to be working with SINGS to uncover the earliest stages of star cluster formation.
Daniela Calzetti is an Associate Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, and the current lead of the STScI NICMOS Instrument Team. Her main scientific interests lie in the study of star formation and dust characteristics in near and distant galaxies. Her role in the SINGS team is to organize the activities related to the data products from the project. Her science interests in the SINGS project are focused around the multi-wavelength calibration of star formation indicators.
Daniel A. Dale is Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Wyoming. His research interests lie in studying the infrared properties of nearby and distant galaxies, and using the Tully-Fisher relation to measure peculiar motions of clusters of galaxies to redshifts up to z=0.2. A recent focus has centered on developing a phenomenological model for the infrared spectral energy distributions of star-forming galaxies. His website is found at physics.uwyo.edu/~ddale.
Bruce Draine is a Professor in the Department of Astrophysical Sciences at Princeton University. His primary research area is the theoretical study of the interstellar medium, especially interstellar dust, photodissociation regions, and shock waves. He is interested in using SINGS to study the dust and gas in the SINGS galaxies. His homepage is http://www.astro.princeton.edu/~draine/.
Chad Engelbracht is an Assistant Astronomer at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona. He is the MIPS Instrument Scientist and is one of the MIPS experts on the SINGS team. His main role on this team is planning the MIPS portion of the observational program and overseeing the MIPS data reduction effort. His main scientific interests are in observational extragalactic astronomy, especially infrared imaging and spectroscopy of starburst galaxies. He will use the SINGS data to generate the baseline Spitzer observations of star formation in normal galaxies, to be compared to the extreme star formation episodes in starburst galaxies.
Karl Gordon is an Assistant Astronomer at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona and is a member of the MIPS Instrument and Science Teams. His main scientific research interests are in the field of interstellar dust, including the observational properties of dust grains (eg., extinction curves, Extended Red Emission, and infrared dust emission) and radiative tranfer in dusty systems (eg., reflection nebulae and galaxies). His main functional role for SINGS is to ensure that the MIPS observations of SINGS galaxies are reduced properly. His main SINGS scientific role is to apply the DIRTY dust radiative transfer model to the SINGS galaxies to furthur our knowledge of the role of dust in galaxies.
Albert Grauer has contributed to this project by doing ground-based observations of SINGS galaxies at J, H, and Ks. He has also conducted at survey of nearby galaxies at J and Ks [Grauer, Rieke, and Quillen, ApJS, 149: 327-342, 2003 December]. He is a Professor of Astronomy at University of Arkansas at Little Rock and is also interested in onserving near Earth Objects.
George Helou is a member of the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, and Executive Director of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center. George has worked on galaxies for most of his career, using a variety of tools from radio continuum to infrared space observatories. He was recently Principal Investigator on the US-ISO Key Project "The Interstellar Medium of Normal Galaxies: Properties and Evolution". In addition to the SINGS science, George is interested in physical processes in the interstellar medium of the Milky Way, and of galaxies in the early Universe.
David Hollenbach is a research scientist at NASA Ames Research Center. He directs the Center for Star Formation Studies, a NASA-funded consortium of researchers from NASA Ames, UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz (www-space.arc.nasa.gov/~csf/). His main scientific interests have been in the areas of star formation, the interstellar medium, astrochemistry, and astrobiology. He has been closely involved with a number of infrared astronomy space missions, including Spitzer, SOFIA, SWAS, ISO, and the KAO.
Thomas Jarrett is a staff scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, Caltech/ JPL. He is the cognizant engineer and scientist in charge of the 2MASS extended source processing and final galaxy catalogs. His main scientific interests are in Galactic supernovae remnants, star formation in nearby galaxies and morphology classification of galaxies. His main role in the SINGS project is to coordinate the quality/verification process of the IRS data products. He will also provide 2MASS imaging and catalog data in support of the calibration of SINGS products. He will use the SINGS data to study the morphological properties of nearby galaxies of all Hubble types, relating them to the more distant universe.
Claus Leitherer is an Associate Astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute. His responsibilities at STScI are split between the support of HST and JWST. He leads the SINGS data archive and web site efforts. His main scientific interests are atmospheres and evolution of hot stars, resolved and unresolved massive stellar populations, the stellar content and interstellar medium of star-forming galaxies, starburst activity in galaxies, and spectrophotometric evolution models of galaxies. He will use the Spitzer Legacy data to study hot stellar populations in the infrared, mainly by comparing them to population synthesis and photoionization models.
Eric J. Murphy is a graduate student at Yale University. His research interests lie in the study of galaxy formation and evolution through the understanding of star formation properties and the characteristics of interstellar dust grains. He is currently performing a study on the FIR-Radio correlation within a sample of star forming galaxy disks listed in the SINGS sample for his thesis.
Marcia Rieke is a member of the Spitzer Science Working Group and the MIPS instrument team. She has recently taken on the duties of principal investigator for the NIRCam on the Next Generation Space Telescope. She is also a Professor of Astronomy in Steward Observatory. She has had a long term interest in observing starburst galaxies and AGN in the infrared. Her main interest in SINGS data lies in establishing baseline properties of galaxies in the infrared to use in interpreting Spitzer deep surveys.
Hélène Roussel has been a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology since August 2001, working with George Helou. Her PhD at the CEA/Saclay (France), in the team responsible for the mid-infrared camera ISOCAM, consisted in the analysis and interpretation of maps of dust emission in spiral galaxies. Her main scientific interests are related to the star formation activity of nearby galaxies, close enough to allow a reasonable detail level, and at the same providing prescriptions for more distant galaxies: How does the dust emission vary as a function of the stellar populations heating the grains, and in what conditions can it be used as a quantitative star formation tracer? What are the physical properties which locally drive star formation ? How do dust grains of various sizes and types evolve with the radiation field ? How can the earliest phases of a star formation burst, when revealed only through dust emission, be characterized?
J.D. Smith is a postdoctoral researcher at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona. His research interests include massive stars and embedded star formation, with a focus on mid- and far-infrared spectroscopy and diagnostics. He leads the SINGS IRS sub-team effort to process and interpret "Step & Stare" spectral maps, Spitzer's unique integral field spectroscopic observing mode.
Michele Thornley is an assistant professor of physics at Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA. Her scientific interests include the properties of star formation in nearby galaxies, as well as the relationship between observed structure, the neutral interstellar medium, and large-scale dynamics in nearby spiral galaxies. Most recently, M. Thornley has been involved in the BIMA Survey of Nearby Galaxies (BIMA SONG), a survey of the molecular gas distributions in the inner disks of 44 nearby spirals. She has also worked with ISO-SWS on studies of the stellar populations and star formation histories in nearby starburst galaxies.
Fabian Walter is currently a Jansky Research Fellow at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Socorro, NM. His research includes studies of the interstellar medium in galaxies, with a focus on radio observations (millimeter CO and centimeter HI interferometry). He is particularly interested in the studies of nearby low-metallicity dwarf galaxies which are believed to be the closest counterparts to the building blocks of the universe. F. Walter is PI on a large VLA project to obtain high-resolution HI imaging for about half of the SINGS galaxies.
Megan is a Senior Data Analyst and STScI. She recieved her Bachelor degrees in Astronomy and Physics from the University of Arizona in 1998 and her Masters in Computer Science from Loyola in 2006. She is responsible for the reduction of the NICMOS and Optical SINGS datasets. She was a member of the NICMOS instrument team from 1998-2003, is currently a member of the WFC3 instrument team, and spends the remaining part of her time working on various science projects including SINGS, the UDF, the Galactic Bulge Deep Field, JWST, the National Virtual Observatory, and the 2Dust thermal modeling code.