David Helfand

David J. Helfand is a U.S. astronomer. He studies stars and space. He was president of Quest University Canada from 2008 to 2015. Before that, he was chair of the Department of Astronomy at Columbia University. He also worked as co-director of the Columbia Astrophysics Laboratory. This is a place where scientists study the universe using special tools.

Education

David Helfand studied at Amherst College and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1973. He then went to the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he got his Master’s degree and his Doctor’s degree in 1977.

Career

David Helfand has been linked with Columbia University since 1977. After finishing his PhD at the University of Massachusetts, he started at Columbia as a research associate for two years before getting a tenure track job.

He has been part of both the Astronomy and Physics departments. In the Astronomy department, he led from 1986 to 1992 and again from 2002 onward. During his time at Columbia, he helped guide students getting their PhD degrees, but he focused more on teaching younger students.

Helfand became a Legacy Fellow of the American Astronomical Society in 2020.

In 2007, Helfand began working at Quest University Canada in British Columbia. In July 2011, he left Columbia to lead Quest University. This private university matched many of his ideas because it had "no faculty ranks, no tenure, and no departments." Helfand said this method helped academic freedom and kept the school focused on teaching and learning. While there, he created a class about climate change to give a calm look at the topic because he felt there was a lot of wrong information in the climate change debate.

Skepticism

David Helfand is part of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. He started a course about climate change at Quest University and often shares ideas that support the skeptical movement. In 2006, he signed a paper from the Center for Inquiry in Washington DC called the "Declaration in Defense of Science and Secularism." This paper talked about worries that some people in America don’t value science. In 2011, he wrote an article in The New York Times about research on special feelings between people done by Daryl Bem. He thought this research would not work when tested again.