NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Dr. Steven Ritz
GLAST Project Scientist and Astrophysicist

Steven Ritz is the GLAST Project Scientist and an astrophysicist in the Astroparticle Physics Laboratory, Astrophysics Science Division of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. since 1998.

Since 1996, Ritz has been involved with GLAST. In 1998 he was the GLAST Large Area Telescope (LAT) Instrument Scientist, and since 2004 has been a LAT Deputy Principle Investigator. His involvement in GLAST deepened in 2000, when he was named the GLAST Deputy Project Scientist, and in 2003 was promoted to the position of GLAST Project Scientist.

Since 2005, he is also an Adjunct Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland's College Park campus.

Before coming to NASA Goddard, he worked at Columbia University in New York, N.Y. From 1988 to 1990 he worked as a Post Doctoral Research Scientist at Columbia University's Nevis Laboratories. From 1990 to 1996 he was an Assistant Professor of Physics, and until 1998, he was Associate Professor of Physics.

He also taught college courses at Columbia University, New York City, N.Y. from 1990 to 1998. It was there that he taught "Physics for Poets" and "Accelerated Physics (Mechanics, E&M)." From 1990 to 1993 he was an instructor in General Physics (Mechanics, E&M, Thermodynamics and Optics, Relativity, Quantum Mechanics).

He has worked as a co-investigator or collaboration member on several experiments since 1984. From 1988 to 1998 he worked on the ZEUS experiment at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) in Hamburg, Germany. The ZEUS detector is a sophisticated tool for studying the particle reactions provided by the high-energetic beams of the HERA accelerator. From 1986 to 1988, he worked on the ALEPH high-energy experiment at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the world's leading laboratory for particle physics in Geneva, Switzerland. From 1984 to 1988, he worked on TASSO data at the DESY.

In 1981, Ritz received a Bachelors of Arts in Physics and Music from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Conn. In 1982, he received his Master's Degree in Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1988.

He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and was a Sloan Foundation Fellow in Physics from 1993 to 1997. He also won the Bertman Prize in Physics from Wesleyan University in 1981.

Steve has also served on many advisory panels and science community groups in both astrophysics and particle physics.

For more information on GLAST, please visit:
http://glast.gsfc.nasa.gov