Pennsylvania State University
Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics
W. Niel Brandt is a Professor in the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Penn State University. Brandt uses a wide variety of astronomical facilities to study the demographics, physics, and ecology of active galaxies and other cosmic sources. He is an author of more than 600 research papers and leads a small research group including postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and undergraduate students. Brandt has served as the Chair/Co-Chair of the AGN SC for many years and has also served in several other Rubin LSST positions. He has recently led a large XMM-Newton X-ray survey of the LSST Deep-Drilling Fields. Brandt plans to use Rubin and complementary multiwavelength data to investigate AGN selection, AGN photometric redshifts, follow-up of X-ray sources with LSST data, high-redshift quasars, reverberation mapping, co-evolution of AGNs and their hosts, and the general source populations in the LSST Deep-Drilling Fields. He is open to other exciting projects.