Born in the UK, Rob studied physics at Durham University, and soon after earned his PhD in the astronomy field. He currently lives in Melbourne, Australia, working at the of Swinburne University. His job has allowed him to travel all over to look into galaxy formations, as well as lecture, co-write research papers, and appear on the covers of various scientific journals. Next month, Rob travel to Hawaii to collect data from two very distant galaxies and use the world's best telescope at the . That also means he'll get to fire a pretty big laser into the sky.

Rob took some time out of his busy schedule to speak to about distant galaxies, possible near-future discoveries, and that big laser.

GeekTech: How did you get into the field of astrophysics?

Rob Crain: I did a physics degree at Durham, which has one of the largest astronomy groups in the world. I took a few elective astronomy modules and got hooked. In my final year I did a year-long project, and was lucky to get assigned a supervisor who happened to be very big in the field, and also an excellent teacher. I loved it, and decided I wanted to carry on with research, so applied for PhD positions in the UK. In the end Durham offered me a studentship working on exactly the kind of thing I wanted, so I stayed and got my PhD late in 2008.

GT: Your says you are a "postdoctoral astrophysicist". What do you do currently?