Chief named for observatory

The Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy named David Silva as the new director of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory based in Tucson. Silva previously was the observatory scientist for the Thirty Meter Telescope project in Pasadena, Calif. Earlier in his career, he was at the observatory as project manager during the commissioning of the WIYN 3.5-meter telescope on Kitt Peak and as a staff astronomer in the U.S. office of the Gemini Observatory. His research interests include extragalactic stellar populations, the formation and evolution of elliptical galaxies, and digital stellar libraries. www.noao.edu