David Helfand
| David Helfand | |
|---|---|
CSICon 2016
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| Residence | Canada |
| Nationality | United States |
| Fields | Astrophysics |
| Institutions |
Columbia University Quest University |
| Alma mater |
Amherst College University of Massachusetts |
| Doctoral advisor | Joseph Taylor |
| Known for | Views on tenure Quest University |
David J. Helfand is a U.S. astronomer who served as president of Quest University Canada from 2008-2015. Prior to his presidency at Quest, he was a Visiting Tutor at Quest. He has also served as chair of the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University and co-director of the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory. He was also part of the university's Physics Department. His stated research interests include radio surveys, the origin and evolution of neutron stars and supernova remnants, and active galactic nuclei. Helfand has been instrumental in the creation of general education classes oriented around the sciences, developing a course, Frontiers of Science, that has subsequently become part of the Core Curriculum of Columbia College, the university's undergraduate liberal arts and sciences division. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Amherst College and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
David Helfand has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1977. Immediately after obtaining his PhD from the University of Massachusetts, he joined Columbia as a research associate for two years before obtaining a tenure track position. He has, at times, been part of both the department of Astronomy and the Department of Physics. As part of the department of Astronomy he served as chair from 1986 until 1992, and again from 2002 until the present. During his time at Columbia he has mentored 22 PhD students, although he tends to focus more on undergraduate education. As part of Columbia University, he along with Darcy Kelley, a professor of biological sciences, pushed for and succeeded in creating a new science core curriculum class called Frontiers of Science, which is claimed to "make (students) aware that they can think about problems the way scientists think about problems". Rather than being taught by a single professor on a single topic, "four scientists in different disciplines deliver a series of three lectures each describing the background, context, and current state of an area of research".
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