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Chris Lindner is
an astronomy graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin,
not to be confused with the famous rock
climber of the same name (ugh).
I am a theoretical
astrophysicist, and my research interests include black hole accretion
disks, relativistic jets, computational fluid dynamics, and gamma ray
bursts. Visit my research page for information
about this, including publications, videos, and lots of pretty pictures.
I was born in Georgia,
lived in Ohio for awhile, and attended high school in South Carolina. Despite the reputation, some of the
schools in that state aren't so bad.
I completed my
undergraduate study at the College of Charleston in Charleston SC, where I
earned a BS in Physics and BA in Astronomy, with a minor in Computer
Science. I graduated Magna Cum Laude, and was the first astronomy
graduate in the state of South Carolina.
I became interested in
Astronomy after burning through an assortment of majors. I initially
wrote off astronomy as a useless science, but as I continued my work in
physics, I realized that astronomy is just physics on really, really huge, insanely hot, fast-moving scales.
My work with Dr. P. Chris Fragile on black hole accretion disks spurred my
excitement for the field, as I got to combine my interests in physics,
computer science, and astronomy in a fun, creative, and incredibly
challenging way.
In Fall 2008 I started
my graduate career at The University of Texas at Austin. From Fall
2008 to Spring 2009 I worked as a teaching assistant for Milos Milosavljevic's
Astronomy 309R course. In the Summer 2009 I was awarded the National
Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship for my proposal, Late time evolution of GRB
Progenitors and the Propagation of X-Ray Flares. I
completed this work, and have worked on several followup
papers on black hole accretion and core collapse supernovae. In 2010,
I was admitted to PhD Candidacy, and am currently continuing my research at
the University of Texas at Austin.
 Public outreach is very
important to me. At the College of Charleston, I organized astronomy
open house events which reached hundreds of visitors. During the
nights I gave presentations and hands-on experiences about interesting
topics in astronomy and even hosted an astronomy-themed game show.
Our physics group also helped several girl and boy scout troupes earn their
merit badges. At UT, I have helped out with public observing nights
and even took a group of undergraduates out to McDonald Observatory to give
them the opportunity to receive hands on experience with real astronomy
equipment. I also helped with a live
reenactment of the solar system.
Outside of research,
astronomy, physics, research, and research, I'm also interested
in generating a cacophony of noises on guitar, bass, and
drums, honing my Wii Bowling skills, contributing
to the skeptics movement, poker, playing racquetball,
volleyball, softball, and basketball, and fiddling around with computers.
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