Director of University of California Observatories/Lick Observatory

Michael Bolte is the Director of the University of California Observatories / Lick Observatory. He is Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Bolte has recently served as UC co-Chair of the Keck Observatory Science Steering Committee and Chair of the Thirty-Meter-Telescope Science Advisory Committee. He is a member of the Thirty-Meter-Telescope Board of Directors and has been a member of the CARA Board since 2006.

Bolte’s research includes measuring the age of the Universe based on studies of ancient star clusters, the early chemical enrichment of the Galaxy, the nature of first-light objects and explosive nucleosynthesis.

He earned his B.S. in physics from the University of Central Florida, his M.S. in physics from Florida State University, and his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Washington. He was a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at UCSC before joining the faculty in 1993. UC Observatories is a multicampus research unit with headquarters at UC Santa Cruz. UCO/Lick also operates the Lick Observatory on Mt. Hamilton and the UCO Technical Labs at UCSC in California.