Note from Pamela – We are pleased to announce that following our successful experiment running informal classes last year, we’ve decided to expand the CosmoAcademy program. CosmoQuest is bringing in Dr. Matthew Francis (another astronomer!) to run the program. Ray Sanders will continue teaching, but Matthew’s leadership will allow us to teach even more classes, and you’ll be able to learn from even more faces, as together we work to learn how to more effective do and talk about science.

Greetings! I’m very pleased and excited to be working with CosmoQuest, and getting to know all of you in the community.

I’m a physicist, science writer, public speaker, educator, and frequent wearer of jaunty hats. My writing and speaking specialties are cosmology, astronomy, and many other topics in physics, all aimed at non-specialist audiences. I sometimes play mandolin badly when nobody has a chance to stop me first. I have appeared in comics form as Pluto’s moon Nix. I’m currently writing a book on cosmology, with working title Back Roads, Dark Skies: A Cosmological Journey.

In my previous existence, I taught astronomy and physics at several colleges, managed a planetarium in Tennessee (now closed), and these days, you can read my writing at my personal science blog Galileo’s Pendulum, the online magazine Double X Science (where I serve as physics and astronomy editor), and at Ars Technica. My work has also appeared at Wired Science, the Scientific American Guest Blog, Culture of Science, and the 365 Days of Astronomy podcast.

You can reach me a plethora of ways, and I look forward to working with you!

• Email: MatthewFrancis@GalileosPendulum.org
• On Twitter: @DrMRFrancis
• On Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BowlerHatScience and http://www.facebook.com/pages/Galileos-Pendulum/191927027511248
• Google+ profile
• LinkedIn profile