Barsony 9501788 This award is made under the auspices of the NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program. As a CAREER awardee the investigator is expected to pursue an active education plan in addition to her scientific research project. Understanding how stars form has great ramifications for understanding formation of stellar systems at all scales, from planetary system formation through large-scale structure of the Universe. Barsony will study star formation from three perspectives -- to determine the initial conditions for star formation, to characterize the earliest observationally recognizable protostellar state, and to try to understand the mechanisms leading to molecular cloud fragmentation and thus the formation of star clusters. These projects rely on observations over a broad range of wavelengths -- millimeter, submillimeter, and near infrared. The education plan includes developing new courses: Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy for undergraduates and graduate classes including Radiative Processes in Astrophysics, Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics and Readings from Current Astrophysics Research. Also an undergraduate physics computing facility will be set up so that computers can be directly integrated into the teaching of undergraduate physics classes. ***
