• Application of wide-field sky survey data—in particular, the Palomar Transient Factory (PTF)—to the study of diverse small-body populations, including main-belt comets (MBCs) and near-Earth asteroids (NEAs)

• Dynamical and cosmochemical exploration of the hypothesis that the inner planets’ surface volatiles were sourced by impacts from objects related (or identical) to one or more extant small-body populations

First-Author Refereed Journal Articles

Main-belt comets in the Palomar Transient Factory survey:
I. The search for extendedness
A. Waszczak, E. O. Ofek, O. Aharonson, S. R. Kulkarni & 6 co-authors
Submitted to Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (January 2013)

Secondary-Author Refereed Journal Articles

Asteroid rotation periods from the Palomar Transient Factory survey
D. Polishook, E. O. Ofek, A. Waszczak, S. R. Kulkarni, & 16 co-authors
Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 421, 2094--2108 (April 2012)

Image Gallery of Solar System Objects in the Palomar Transient Factory survey

Additional Work/Links

Solar system small bodies discovered by the Palomar Transient Factory survey
Automatically updated list of asteroids and comets discovered by PTF

Hydrogen and nitrogen cosmochemistry: A review
Article originally written for a course taught by D. Burnett at Caltech (January 2013)

Conference Proceedings:

• LPSC 2013 (Houston, Texas)
  
• EPSC 2011 (Nantes, France)
• DPS 2008 (Ithaca, New York)

Academic Summary

Ph.D. — California Institute of Technology (2010—present)

• Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences (GPS)
  
• Department of Planetary Sciences
• Grad. advisors: Shri Kulkarni & Oded Aharonson

B.A. — Cornell University (2005—2009)

• College of Arts & Sciences
  
• Major in Physics
• Concentration in Astrophysics
• Minor in French Language
• Undergrad. advisor: Jean-Luc Margot

Biography

Adam Waszczak was born in 1987 in Connecticut. He grew up in Colchester, Connecticut, where he attended Bacon Academy, the town's public high school. After finishing college at Cornell (in upstate New York), in 2010 he moved to southern California, where he currently is a graduate student (Ph.D. candidate) and works as a research/teaching assistant at Caltech.

_{This page was last updated February 2013}