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In a ceremony today at Simon Fraser University, the Honourable Terry Beech, Minister of Citizens’ Services, announced that Professor Jason Hessels has been named the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Transient Astrophysics at Ï㽶ÊÓƵ.

Hessels, who joins McGill from the University of Amsterdam’s Anton Pannekoek Institute of Astronomy and ASTRON (Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy), is recognized as a global leader in the study of transient astrophysical phenomena, events that can be observed only briefly – from milliseconds to years – compared to the lifetimes of stars and galaxies. His research focuses on the use of networks of geographically distributed radio telescopes to detect what are known as `fast radio bursts,’ mysterious flashes of radio waves emitted from deep in the Universe.

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