Adam Burgasser is a Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC San Diego, and an observational astrophysicist investigating the coolest stars, brown dwarfs and extrasolar planets. A native of Buffalo, New York, Adam received his Bachelors of Science in Physics from UC San Diego and his Masters and Ph.D. degrees in Physics from the California Institute of Technology. He went on to be a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at UCLA, a Spitzer Postdoctoral Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and a member of the Physics faculty at MIT before coming back to UC San Diego in 2010. He has published nearly 700 peer-review articles, conference proceedings and book chapters in astrophysics and education research, and is best known for his work defining the T spectral class of brown dwarfs, investigations of binary star/brown dwarf systems, and studies of weather and radio emission in cool extraterrestrial atmospheres. Adam is an advocate for equity in the sciences, leading UCSD's UC-HBCU partnership in Physics with Morehouse and Spelman Colleges and serving as chair of the American Astronomical Society Committee on the Status of Minorities in Astronomy. He has been awarded UCSD's highest awards in teaching, mentorship, and championing equity, and was a Fulbright Scholar in the UK. A former national springboard diving champion in, Adam can still be found at the pool or the beach enjoying the water.
