D.J. Pisano

Dr. Pisano is Chair and associate professor in the Physics & Astronomy Department at West Virginia University and an adjunct assistant astronomer at the NRAO. He arrived in January 2009 from the NRAO in Green Bank, WV where he worked as a postdoc. He previously worked at the Naval Research Lab and the ATNF.

He is an astronomer interested in how galaxies form and evolve. He uses radio telescopes around the world primarily to study neutral hydrogen (HI) in our own Milky Way and other, more distant galaxies. Projects he is actively working on include studying the high-velocity clouds (HVCs) around the Milky Way using the Galactic All-Sky Survey (GASS), a recently completed HI survey of the southern sky using the Parkes radio telescope. 

Another aspect of his research involves radio studies of luminous compact blue galaxies (LCBGs). These are prolifically star-forming galaxies that are common in the distant universe, but are exceedingly rare today. He is a part of an international collaboration studying LCBGs in the local universe in order to better constrain the current nature and evolutionary fate of LCBGs in the distant universe.