Gerard van Belle

President & Observatory Director

Gerard grew up in Seattle, surrounded by a widespread and vigorous aerospace culture that has deep roots in the area. He was inspired to pursue a BA degree in Physics-Astronomy at Whitman College, which was followed by a Physics MA at The Johns Hopkins University and a Physics PhD at The University of Wyoming. At Wyoming Gerard did his dissertation work with the Infrared-Optical Telescope Array (IOTA). IOTA was a pioneering optical interferometer, with participation from Wyoming and lesser known institutions like Harvard and Univ. of Massachusetts.

After graduating, Gerard went to work at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on the Palomar Testbed Interferometer and the Keck Interferometer projects as a Senior Optical Engineer. Gerard's science observations at PTI on the first direct measures of the distended shape of the rapidly rotating star Altair earned him one of the inaugural JPL Ed Stone Awards for Outstanding Research Publication. His work on stellar fundamental parameters have established the de facto standard values for temperatures and radii of giant stars, super giant stars, and main sequence stars.

Additional work on other optical telescope arrays has followed, including the Georgia State University CHARA Array, the European Southern Observatory's VLTI, and NPOI. Most recently, Gerard has been working on space-based optical interferometry, including proposals for lunar-based optical telescope arrays.

Gerard moved from JPL to Caltech-IPAC in 2002, but then on to Germany in 2007 for work at ESO as a VLTI Instrument Scientist, and in 2011 returned to the US to work at Lowell Observatory as an Astronomer. He was granted tenure in 2014, and was appointed Lowell's Director of Science in 2024. In 2025 he received an appointment as Research Professor at Northern Arizona University, before being named the Observatory Director of LCO in September of 2026.

Gerard's personal homepage