CONVERSATIONS: Stories of Women and Men

Ata Sarajedini a.k.a. "The Science DJ" is a Yale-educated PhD astronomer and astrophysicist with his own active scientific research program and a noted authority on stellar and galactic astronomy. He has been teaching college-level astronomy courses in the state university system in Florida for over 20 years. Before coming to FAU in January 2017, he served as Associate Dean for Natural Sciences and Mathematics as well as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida. Before that, he was Associate Chair and Acting Chair of the Department of Astronomy. He spent seven years as a postdoctoral researcher and a Hubble Fellow at Kitt Peak National Observatory and San Francisco State University. Dr. Sarajedini spent two years at Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT as an Assistant Professor before moving to the University of Florida in 2001. He received an NSF CAREER award in 2001, a University of Florida Research Professor award in 2006, and was the principal investigator of a large Treasury project with the Hubble Space Telescope starting in 2014. Dr. Sarajedini has over 500 publications, which have over 15,000 citations. Of these publications, over 200 have appeared in the peer-reviewed literature.