Dr. Randall K. Smith

Arcus Principal Investigator
Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Dr. Smith is a Senior Astrophysicist at SAO. In addition to being the Principle Investigator (PI) for Arcus, he is the PI of AtomDB, a key atomic database for high-resolution X-ray spectra, and a multi-institutional effort to return the state-of-the-art SAO Electron Beam Ion Trap for use in measuring atomic rates and wavelengths. He was also a member of the X-ray Surveyor (Lynx) Science & Technology Definition Team and is the US Representative to Athena Science Study Team. Prior to that, he was Lead Scientist for the International X-ray Observatory and Co-I for the Soft X-ray Spectrometer on Hitomi. He received a B.S. in Math/Physics from Carnegie Mellon University, and both M.S. and Ph.D. (physics) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.