Faculty Profile
Dennis Bodewits
Professor, Department of Physics
My research centers on the activity and evolution of comets and asteroids. What processes affect the observable gas surrounding comets? How are they connected to the formation of our solar system? How do they evolve? I try to answer these questions by combining telescopic observations with in-situ exploration by planetary missions (Rosetta, Deep Impact (EPOXI), and Stardust-NExT). My primary tools are Neil Gehrels-Swift Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the James Webb Space Telescope.
This work has contributed to more than 180 refereed scientific papers and has been supported by over $7 million in research funding.
- dennis@auburn.edu
- Office
- Edmund C. Leach Science Center 2121
- Address
- 380 Duncan Drive, Auburn, AL 36849
Biography
Dennis Bodewits is a professor of Physics at Auburn University. Born in Hoogezand-Sappemeer, the Netherlands, he studied experimental physics and astronomy at the University of Groningen. He earned his Ph.D. after writing a dissertation on charge exchange emission from solar wind ions interacting with cometary atmospheres at the Center for Advanced Radiation Technology (KVI-CART) at the University of Groningen.
After receiving a NASA Postdoctoral Program fellowship, he moved to Washington, D.C., and began observing comets and asteroids with the Swift space telescope at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Between 2010 and 2018 he was a member of the Small Body Group at the University of Maryland, where he was involved in the comet fly-bys of the Deep Impact and Stardust-NExT missions, and in the Rosetta mission that orbited comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for more than two years.
In 2017, the IAU honored him by assigning asteroid 10033 the formal name "Bodewits." Fun fact: he is one of only a dozen people ever to fly a man-powered helicopter, the University of Maryland's Gamera II.