Congratulations to Casey DeRoo for successfully defending his PhD dissertation on "Fabrication and Testing of Off-Plane Gratings for Future X-Ray Spectroscopy Missions."

"Casey has become an expert in the use X-ray reflection gratings and the construction of X-ray grating spectrometers. Casey manufactured and performance tested a new generation of X-ray off-plane reflection gratings. These X-ray gratings can achieve high diffraction efficiencies and enable high resolution X-ray spectroscopy of astrophysical sources. His thesis provides an overview of currently operating X-ray spectrographs and offers a detailed look at the mathematics of diffraction. He also conducted two performance tests of this next generation of off-plane gratings, which serves to retire technical risk and motivate their use in future space missions. Finally, his thesis details a suborbital rocket payload design centered around this new generation of gratings. His thesis work represents a step forward in the development of this NASA `critical technology' and lays the groundwork for a future X-ray spectroscopy mission featuring off-plane gratings."
— Randall McEntaffer, PhD advisor

Dr. DeRoo has been named the Leon Van Speybroeck Postdoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, MA.