Rychard Bouwens

Rychard Bouwens is an associate professor at the University of Leiden. He is also a former member of the Advanced Camera for Surveys Guaranteed Time Observation (GTO) team and postdoctoral research astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz. His work helped lead to the discovery of UDFy-38135539, the most remote object ever observed from Earth. He works on the interpretation of high redshift starbursts. He helped create the Bouwens' Universe Construction Set (BUCS), which can simulate arbitrary galaxy fields and calculate any galaxy observables.

He obtained his bachelor's degree in physics, chemistry, and mathematics from Hope College. He then went on to earn his Ph.D. in physics at the University of California, Berkeley under the supervision of Joseph Silk and also worked with Tom Broadhurst.