Lars Bildsten, PhD

Lars Bildsten is Director of Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics (KITP), Frederick W. Gluck Chair in Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB).

Lars joined KITP and UCSB in July 1999 after receiving his PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in 1991. Lars was then at Caltech for three years as the Lee A. DuBridge Research Fellow in Theoretical Astrophysics and received a Compton Fellowship from NASA in spring 1994. He was an assistant and associate professor in both the Physics and Astronomy departments at University of California, Berkeley from January 1995 through July 1999. Lars’s research has included studying stellar structure, including nuclear burning on neutron stars, the role of neutron stars as gravity wave sources, the theory of lithium depletion, and the physics of white dwarfs and their explosions as Type Ia supernovae.

Lars has served on panels during the Decadal Survey of Astronomy and Astrophysics, has been an elected member of the Executive Committee of the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society, and an elected member of the Executive Committee of the Division of Astrophysics of the American Physical Society, and has served on many recent NRC panels, including Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Panel to Review the Science Requirements for the Terrestrial Planet Finder.