Stan Woosley, a theoretical astrophysicist, is a leading authority on supernovae, nuclear astrophysics, and gamma-ray bursts, with over 400 publications in these areas. He directs the Center for Supernova Research, funded by SciDAC and headquartered at UCSC. His work on the evolution of massive stars and their explosion as supernovae describes how the "heavy" elements needed for life, such as oxygen and iron, are forged and ejected. In addition, Woosley's "collapsar" model of massive star explosions has been identified as the central engine of certain types of gamma-ray bursts in which a huge dying star collapses into a central black hole. A fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), Woosley received the APS's Hans Bethe Prize, as well as the American Astronomical Society's Bruno Rossi Prize, in 2005. Woosley earned his Ph.D. in astrophysics from Rice University in 1971 and then worked three years as a nuclear physicist at Cal Tech with Willy Fowler. He joined the UCSC faculty in 1975 and has served three times as chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics. He is an elected member of tha American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences.
Coauthors Weiqun Zhang and Andrew MacFadyen are former students of Woosley whose careers have been partly supported by SciDAC. Zhang is a NASA Chandra Postdoctoral Fellow at the Stanford Kavli Institute for Cosmology. MacFadyen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study.