Dr. Alexander Rudolph is Professor of Physics at California State Polytechnic University (Cal Poly Pomona). He is also Director of the California-Arizona Minority Partnership for Astronomy Research and Education (CAMPARE), a partnership between Cal Poly Pomona and the University of Arizona Steward Observatory with the goal or promoting the involvement of underserved minorities and women in Astronomy. He received his bachelor’s degree from Haverford College in 1982, and his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Chicago in 1988. Before joining the faculty at Cal Poly Pomona, he was on the faculty of Harvey Mudd College from 1994-2001. He also spent a year teaching high school science and math.

As a member of CATS, he was a lead investigator on a national study of over 4000 students at 31 colleges and universities around the country with the goal of determining how interactive techniques affect students learning of concepts in astronomy. Results from this study have been published in the American Journal of Physics, Astronomy Education Review, and Physics Today.

An astronomer, Dr. Rudolph studies star formation and galactic structure, using radio, infrared, and optical telescopes. He has published articles, many with undergraduate student co-authors, on the properties of outflows from forming stars and circumstellar disks around such stars, the dependence of abundance gradients on galactocentric radius in the Milky Way, searches for Brown Dwarfs, and the properties of HII regions in the outer Galaxy.