Bio

About me:

Hi there! I’m Carrie Fitzgerald, an assistant professor of physics at Montgomery College and director of the Montgomery College Science Center Observatory.

I have a BS in physics from Stetson University and as an undergraduate I worked on observational astronomy projects involving Martian spectroscopy and the search for extrasolar planets. My MS and PhD come from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. My master’s work involved developing software to model the Milky Way Galaxy and I was fortunate to get observing time at Kitt Peak’s Mayall Observatory for this project. My PhD thesis involved laboratory measurement of nuclear reactions that occur in globular cluster red giant stars.

After graduate school I was awarded a National Research Council Associateship to work at the Naval Research Laboratory where I helped build a gamma-ray detector to study high-energy radiation from the Sun. Before coming to Montgomery College, I was employed as a scientist at the Remote Sensing Laboratory (RSL) where I served both as a support to the National Nuclear Security Administration’s emergency response teams and as a researcher investigating advanced detector technologies.

I’ve volunteered at several public observatories, including most recently the beautiful Crosby Ramsey Memorial Observatory at the Maryland Science Center in Baltimore, MD. I’ve also worked as a Planetarium console operator at UNC’s Morehead Planetarium and at The Maryland Science Center’s Davis Planetarium.

I am thrilled to be at Montgomery College where I have the best job in the universe- teaching astronomy and physics to some amazing students, as well as getting to observe the cosmos with the campus telescopes.