Dr. Luke Sollitt

Dr. Sollitt is a Senior Research Scientist at PSI and an Associate Professor of Physics at The Citadel. He earned a B.A. in German Language and Literature at the University of Maryland in 1991, then worked as a Revenue Officer with the Internal Revenue Service. After his government service, he earned a B.S. degree in Physics in 1997 at the University of Maryland, then M.S. (1999) and Ph.D. (2004) degrees in Physics at Caltech. His thesis pioneered a technique to infer average ionic charge states of solar energetic particles. After graduate school, Luke worked as a Space Systems Engineer and Space Scientist at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems in Redondo Beach, CA. He was part of the three-person team at Northrop Grumman that formulated the original concept for what became NASA’s LCROSS mission to the Moon, and was named one of the mission’s first Co-Investigators when the team was started at NASA/Ames. Luke is deputy project scientist for the Atsa Suborbital Observatory, an effort to utilize commercial suborbital spacecraft as platforms for astronomical observations. At the Citadel, in addition to his research work, Luke teaches undergraduate physics classes and mentors cadets in their undergraduate research.