Title: Molecules and Masers - what do they tell us

Speaker: Willem Baan (SHAO & ASTRON)

Time & Place: Thursday, 3:00pm, December 12th, Lecture Hall, 3rd floor 

Abstract: Molecular emissions are tools for diagnosing the emitting regions. The interpretation of these emissions has become an essential key for understanding star-formation, the ISM, starburst and AGN activity, galaxy evolution, and cosmology. This talk will review aspects of interpretation of these thermal molecular line emissions and non-thermal maser emissions and what these mean for the emitting regions. 

Biog: Willem's academic career started in his native Netherlands in Delft, after which he went to MIT to undertake an MSc & then PhD in plasma physics and theoretical physics. After a postdoc at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he was a faculty member at Penn State before moving to Arecibo Observatory. His most recent position was at ASTRON, where he was Westerbork observatory director. He is now a CAS visiting Professor at SHAO. Willem is an expert in astronomical masers and ultra-luminous galaxies, authoring over 180 scientific articles.