Todd Hunter Email & Phone Number

Charlottesville, Virginia Area

Until 2010, my service work was split between the Green Bank Telescope (GBT), where I worked with Fred Schwab and Steve White on improvements to the surface efficiency for high frequency observing, and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), where I worked with the Central Development Laboratory team on front end receiver systems integration issues and performed commissioning tests at the ALMA Test Facility at the VLA site in New Mexico on behalf of the North American ALMA Science Center (NAASC). Since then, I have focused on various ALMA commissioning tasks (ranging from single dish imaging to the first two long baseline interferometric imaging campaigns), providing software support for manual calibration and imaging of PI science data, and developing tasks and heuristics for the automated CASA pipeline, as the lead scientist for calibration heuristics. I also serve as the North American representative on the ALMA Integrated Development Team that is fostering the ALMA2030 Wideband Sensitivity Upgrade, and as the CSV work package lead of the next generation Very Large Array (ngVLA).In collaboration with Crystal Brogan, Claudia Cyganowski, Gordon Macleod, and others, my scientific research covers many aspects of high-mass star formation, from the search for massive prestellar cores to the identification and quantitative study of deeply embedded protoclusters via continuum, molecular line, and maser emission, and the study of accretion outbursts in massive protostars.

St Andrews, Fife, United Kingdom

Charlottesville, Virginia

Cambridge, Massachusetts

I programmed and commissioned a variety of systems for the Submillimeter Array on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, including the antenna servo control board, the receiver tuning control board and the motorized local oscillators and phase lock loop circuitry designed by Robert Kimberk. Working with him, Bob Wilson and Ken Young, I wrote the automatic LO and SIS mixer tuning software, the device driver for the second-generation optical pointing telescopes, the antenna motor servo, the antenna receiver cabin HVAC servo, and much of the telescope monitor and control software. In 2005, I led the testing team and the observing campaign that resulted in the first astronomical interferometric images at 690 GHz. In 1999-2000, I worked with Jon Kawamura, Edward Tong and Ray Blundell on the team that achieved the first ground-based heterodyne detection above 1 THz (CO 9-8 in Orion KL) using a superconducting hot-electron bolometer mixer on the 10 meter Heinrich Hertz Telescope on Mt. Graham in Arizona.

Cambridge, Massachusetts

I worked in the submillimeter receiver lab on the receiver control hardware and software and participated in commissioning of the first SMA antennas, including the achievement of first fringes at 230 GHz at Haystack Observatory in Fall 1998 with Ken Young, Nimesh Patel, Charlie Katz, Bill Snow, and T. K. Sridharan. During this period, I also collaborated on several research projects and papers on massive star formation with Qizhou Zhang, T.K. Sridharan, and Gerry Neugebauer.

Phd, Astronomy

I was a key member of a small team that designed and commissioned the first facility 350 micron bolometer array camera (SHARC I) on Mauna.

Bs, Astronomy And Astrophysics, 3.90

Activities and Societies: University Scholars Program (now Schreyers Honors College); Eberly College of Science Braddock ScholarshipI.