Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2000

Professor, Department of Physics, Drexel University

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Professor Richards is an expert in the identification of quasars and active galactic nuclei (AGNs) through modern statistical methods using imaging data (pictures) from large astronomical sky surveys, particularly the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Quasars and AGNs are galaxies in which new material is currently falling into supermassive black holes at their centers. He is particularly interested in understanding the accretion disks that feed these massive black holes, how mass and energy ejected from these black holes influences the evolution of galaxies over time, and how large quasar samples can be used as statistical probes of the structure of the Universe.