Iair Arcavi

San Diego Comic Fest Science of Science Fiction Guest Iair Acavi
Iair (pronounced “ya-eer”) Arcavi is a NASA Einstein Postdoctoral Fellow at the Univeristy of California, Santa Barbara. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Physics and Mathematics at Tel Aviv University and a Masters and PhD in Astrophysics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Iair has been using the robotic telescopes of Las Cumbres Observatory, networked around the globe, to catch fleeting astronomical events such as exploding supernovae and stars torn apart by supermassive black holes. Recently he led one of the teams that co-discovered the flare made by merging neutron stars, known as a kilonova, following the detection of their gravitational waves. Iair is also the organizer of Astronomy on Tap Santa Barbara, a monthly outreach activity in which informal astronomy-related presentations are given at a bar. You can see all of their presentations here.