Lynn Cominsky Discusses: Exploring the Extreme Universe with Fermi

NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope mission is to explore the most energetic and exotic objects in the cosmos: blazing galaxies, intense stellar explosions and super-massive black holes. Prof. Cominsky will explain how Fermi uses matter and anti-matter to track gamma rays to their cosmic locations, and will showcase exciting results from the mission.  She is as well the coordinator for the educational and outreach efforts for the new high energy gamma-ray mission, Fermi.

Lynn Cominsky is the Chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department atSonoma State University (SSU), where she has been on the faculty for over twenty years. She is an author on over 60 researchpapers in refereed journals, and the Principal Investigator on over$10 million of grants to SSU. Prof. Cominsky is the founder and directorof SSU.s Education and Public Outreach Group, which supports several different NASA high-energy astrophysics missions. The group excels at K-12 teacher training, curriculum development, and the development of interactive web activities for students that teach math and science.

Recently, she has served as the scientific director for the PBS NOVA television program “Monster ofthe Milky Way” and accompanying planetarium show “Black Holes: The Other Side of Infinity”. In 1993, Prof. Cominsky was named SSU’s Outstanding Professor, and the California Professor of the Year by the Council for the Advancement and Support ofEducation. In 2007, she was named a Fellow of the  California Council onScience and Technology, and in 2009, a Fellow of the American Physical Society.