Kevin France
Associate Professor • Fellow
Dept. of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, UCB 391
University of Colorado at Boulder
Boulder, CO 80309
In the past five years, the France research group has carried out observational and theoretical studies of stars and exoplanets while developing new hardware for future NASA UV/optical space astrophysics and planetary science missions.   Dr. France was the science lead for the Hubble Space Telescope-COS Guaranteed Time Observing program’s protoplanetary disk, cool star, and exoplanet programs.  He has since augmented that work with approximately a half-dozen Hubble guest observing programs as well as several X-ray programs with Chandra, XMM, and Swift.   This work has led to ~50 peer-reviewed publications from 2011 to 2016, many of these papers led by CASA graduate students.   Dr. France became the PI of the CASA UV sounding rocket program in 2012 and has since launched 3 successful NASA missions from White Sands Missile Range.  This work has led to several scientific and technical publications, trained the next generation of scientists and engineers to support future NASA missions, and developed technology for these same missions.  In addition to the suborbital program, Dr. France’s group is supported by several other NASA technology grants for the development of next-generation UV/optical detector systems and optical coatings for large space telescopes.