Mark Pecaut Wins Curtis Award for Excellence In Teaching by a Graduate Student
Mark Pecaut, a 5th year Ph.D. student with the Department of Physics & Astronomy, was recently awarded the 2013 Edward Peck Curtis Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student. The Curtis Award is awarded to up to five full-time graduate students at the University of Rochester each year for excellence in undergraduate instruction in the classroom or laboratory, and includes a monetary prize of $500. Mark will be defending his Ph.D. thesis this summer on astrophysics research completed with his advisor, Eric Mamajek, Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Rochester. Mark has co-authored five refereed astrophysics journal articles during his time at the University of Rochester as a Ph.D. student, and in 2010 co-discovered the unusual eclipsing extrasolar ring system orbiting the young Sun-like star "J1407". Mark has accepted an offer to join the Department of Math and Physics at Rockhurst University in Kansas City, MO in Fall 2013 as an assistant professor.