Dr W. Robert Binns

Research Professor

Department of Physics, Washington University in St. Louis

PH: 011 (314) 935-6247
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Background

Education

• 1969 Ph.D., Colorado State University, Physics
• 1966 M.S., Colorado State University, Physics
• 1962 B.S., Ottawa University, Physics

Research Interests

Dr. Binns' research is primarily in Cosmic Ray, and recently, in Neutrino Astrophysics. He is the Principal Investigator on the Super-TIGER experiment, which was recently selected by NASA, to measure the elemental composition in the galactic cosmic rays of nuclei heavier than zinc. He is a Co-investigator on the Cosmic Ray Isotope Spectrometer (CRIS) experiment aboard the NASA ACE spacecraft that was launched in August, 1997, and was responsible for the development of the scintillating fiber hodoscope, which is the trajectory detector on CRIS. The objective of the CRIS experiment is to measure the isotopic abundances of nuclei with 3 < Z (charge) < 30. He is also a coinvestigator on the Antarctic Impulsive Transient Antenna (ANITA) experiment, a high energy neutrino experiment that was flown successfully on a long duration balloon flight over Antarctica in 2006-2007 and 2008-2009. He and the Washington University cosmic ray group have developed scintillating optical fibers coupled to image intensified CCD cameras or multi-anode photomultiplier tubes to obtain images of charged particle tracks.

    He was the Principal Investigator on the Trans-lron Galactic Element Recorder (TIGER) experiment, a predecessor experiment to Super-TIGER, which was designed to measure the elemental composition of cosmic rays heavier than iron. It was flown from Antarctica on long duration balloon flights in 2001 and 2003. He was also a co-investigator on the Heavy Nuclei Experiment that was flown aboard the NASA High Energy Astronomy Observatory (HEAO-3) spacecraft launched in 1979. In addition, he has been an investigator on numerous other balloon-borne experiments.