Dennis Bodewits, PhD, College of Sciences and Mathematics Faculty and Staff

Short Bio

Dennis Bodewits is a Professor of Physics at Auburn University. Born in Hoogezand-Sappemeer, the Netherlands, he studied experimental physics and astronomy at the University of Groningen, where he earned his Ph.D. studying charge-exchange emission produced by interactions between solar-wind ions and cometary atmospheres at the Center for Advanced Radiation Technology (KVI-CART).

After receiving a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship, he moved to the Washington, D.C., area and began using NASA’s Swift space telescope to study comets and asteroids at Goddard Space Flight Center. From 2010 to 2018, he was a member of the Small Bodies Group at the University of Maryland, where he contributed to the Deep Impact and Stardust-NExT comet flyby missions and to ESA’s Rosetta mission, which accompanied comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko for more than two years.

Bodewits joined Auburn University’s Department of Physics in 2018, where his research focuses on the composition, activity, and evolution of comets and other small bodies. In 2017, the International Astronomical Union recognized his contributions to planetary science by naming asteroid 10033 Bodewits in his honor.

Fun fact: Bodewits is one of only about a dozen people to have piloted a human-powered helicopter—the University of Maryland’s record-setting Gamera II.