Dr. John (Jack) Piotrowski

About Me

As the Matt Johns Instrumentation Fellow at Carnegie Observatories, I develop cutting-edge optical instruments that push the boundary of our observational capabilities and enable science in an era of massive astronomical surveys. My objective is to lead an academic research group that designs, builds, commissions, and uses spectrographs to support the current and next generation of astronomical observatories.

Large-scale survey telescopes (e.g. Vera Rubin Observatory, Roman Space Telescope, SPHEREx) are pushing to fainter magnitudes than have previously been possible. To maximize the scientific impact of these surveys, the astronomy community requires detailed spectroscopic follow-up observations, which are easily accessible from ground-based observatories. With the onset of extremely large telescopes (ELTs), such as the Giant Magellan Telescope and the European ELT, we must develop instruments that maximize the utility of these transformative observatories.