Evalyn Gates is currently the Assistant Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago and a Senior Research Associate in the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. She was recently appointed as the new Executive Director and CEO of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, a position she will assume in May.
Her research focuses on various aspects of cosmology and particle astrophysics, from neutrinos to the cosmic microwave background. Most recently she has been searching for ancient stellar fossils in the form of the oldest white dwarfs.
After receiving her Ph. D. in theoretical particle physics from Case Western Reserve University in 1990, Gates was a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University before coming to the University of Chicago in 1992. She spent seven years at the Adler Planetarium and Astronomy Museum, initially as Director of Astronomy and then as Vice President for Science and Education. Gates has written several articles on the topic of women in physics, and her first book, “Einstein’s Telescope: The Hunt for Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the Universe,” was published by W.W. Norton in February 2009.
