News

 Professor Jo Bovy is appointed as Chair and Graduate Chair of the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics effective July 1, 2025, until December 31, 2030.

Jo Bovy is a Professor in the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the
University of Toronto and Canada Research Chair in Galactic Astrophysics. He received his PhD in
physics from New York University in 2011 and was a long-term Hubble/Bahcall fellow in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study from 2011 until starting at U of T in 2015.
Professor Bovy’s research focuses on galactic dynamics, galaxy formation and evolution, the astrophysical study of dark matter, and astrostatistics. By combining data from various large-scale
surveys of the Milky Way, such as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, the Gaia mission, and the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment, with sophisticated chemo-dynamical modeling and machinelearning techniques, his group has been able to map the stellar structure of the Milky Way in unprecedented detail from its innermost bar-shaped region to the outer stretches of the ghostly stellar halo surrounding the disk. He and his group have also determined the distribution of dark matter in the Milky Way with high precision, deriving strong constraints on the fundamental nature of dark matter. He is also the author of several widely used software tools for research in astrophysics, such as the Galpy Python package that is used in almost 1,000 astrophysics papers.

Professor Bovy’s research has been recognized by a number of awards, including an Alfred P. Sloan
fellowship, the Helen B. Warner Prize for Astronomy and the Vera Rubin Early Career Prize from the
American Astronomical Society, the Rutherford Memorial Medal in Physics from the Royal Society of Canada, and the Steacie Prize.

Please join me in welcoming Professor Bovy to his new role.

I would like to thank sincerely Professor Roberto Abraham who has served as Chair and Graduate
Chair since July 1, 2020. Professor Abraham received his PhD in 1992 from the University of
Oxford. He joined U of T in 2000 as an assistant professor in the Department of Astronomy and
Astrophysics. In 2003, he was awarded tenure, and in 2009 he was promoted to the rank of professor. His work is focused on observations of galaxy formation and evolution and on the development of innovative scientific instruments, such as the Dragonfly Telephoto Array. Professor Abraham has won numerous awards for his work, including the Canadian Astronomical Society’s P. G. Martin Award, an NSERC Steacie Memorial Fellowship, a Canada Council for the Arts Killam Research Fellowship, and a Premier’s Research Excellence Award, and the University of Toronto Outstanding Teaching Award. He has served on the Board of Directors of major international observatories, advised NASA and scientific funding agencies in various capacities and served as Canada’s representative on the James Webb Space Telescope Advisory Committee. In 2023, Professor Abraham was awarded the Jackson-Gwilt Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society for his
innovative work with the Dragonfly Telephoto Array.

Stephen Wright

Acting Dean, Faculty of Arts & Science