Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Texas at Rio Grande Valley, Creator and Founder, STARGATE and Expanding Frontiers
Innovative astrophysicist, researcher, and inspiring educator whose research and activities are creating new models of education and advancing technologies for space exploration and related fields. Projects created include: The Arecibo Remote Command Center (ARCC), The Low Frequency All Sky Monitor (LoFASM), and, most recently, STARGATE.
Dr. Jenet arrived in Brownsville 12 years ago with a dream of using space exploration to change the lives of people in the region and make South Texas known globally as a leader in mankind’s effort to explore the universe. Before coming here, he did his undergraduate work at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and his graduate work at the California Institute of Technology, both in Physics. After a brief foray into the oil industry, where he obtained two patents for oil field technologies, he worked at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he did seminal work in the field of pulsar timing and gravitational wave detection, which lead to the creation of an international collaboration that is building a galactic scale observatory for gravitational waves. Once in South Texas, Dr. Jenet went on to create several integrated research and education programs that get his students involved in scientific research early in their careers. These programs, known as the Arecibo Remote Command Center and the Low Frequency All Sky Monitor, enabled him to create the Center for Advanced Radio Astronomy, a center responsible for obtaining over 50 million dollars in research funding for itself and its partners. Most recently, Dr. Jenet created a model strategic alliance with SpaceX known as STARGATE.
