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CXC Biographies: Vicky Kaspi
Associate Professor, McGill University
 Vicky Kaspi
is an Associate Professor in the Physics Department of McGill
University. She received a B.Sc. in physics from McGill University in
1989, and an M.A. and Ph.D. in Physics from Princeton University in
1991 and 1993 respectively. Prior to joining the McGill faculty in
1999, Dr. Kaspi was an Assistant Professor of Physics at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology where she also held a Hubble
Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Center for Space Research. From
1994-96, she was both a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow in the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory and a Visiting Associate at the California
Institute of Technology.
Dr. Kaspi has been the recipient of numerous awards, including the
Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's Young Explorer Prize in
2002, a Canada Research Chair in Physics in 2001, and an Alfred P.
Sloan Research Fellowship and Annie Jump Cannon Prize in Astronomy,
both in 1998.
Her research focuses on neutron stars, rapidly rotating, ultradense
stars that are close cousin to black holes. Among the specific
questions she is hoping to answer are: how neutron stars are formed,
how fast they can rotate, what are they made of, and what sort of
magnetic fields can they harbor. These questions ultimately constrain
fundamental issues such as the equation of state of dense matter, and
the physics of supernova explosions, the source of the matter out of
which we are made.
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