People of the Dome

Jason E. Ybarra is a Teaching Assistant Professor and serves as the Director of the WVU Planetarium and Observatory. Dr. Ybarra’s research interests include galactic star formation, protostellar outflows, physics education, and the history of astronomy. They earned a Ph.D. from the University of Florida where, as a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Program (GSRP) fellow and a NASA Florida Space Grant Consortium fellow, they studied how star formation progresses through the Rosette Molecular Cloud by analyzing the stellar and gas content of embedded clusters. They also earned a M.S. in Physics from San Francisco State University, where as a graduate student, they co-discovered the first observational evidence of a precessing jet carving out a protostellar envelope. Dr. Ybarra's postdoctoral work at the Instituto de Astronomía, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM-Ensenada) involved characterizing mid-infrared emission from star-forming regions, studying protostellar outflow interactions, and developing astro-statistical methods. They also served as the editor of the "This Month in Astronomical History" column (2019-2020) for the Historical Astronomy Division of the American Astronomical Society (HAD-AAS), as well as being a frequent contributing author.

Dr. Ybarra enjoys teaching and mentoring students. Previous to WVU, they taught physics and astronomy at Davidson College, Bridgewater College, and California State University, Sacramento. They have also taught physics to monastics at the Drepung Loseling Monastery in Karnataka, India through the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. 

When not teaching or doing science, they write poetry, paint, camp in the woods, and spend time with their wife and cats.

Rowe Crawford is currently a first-year PhD student at West Virginia University. She graduated from Gettysburg College in 2026 with a Bachelor's in Physics. She is excited to work as a Planetarium Assistant and use the immersive platform to share about our solar system and beyond. Rowe’s research experience is in plasmas and on how magnetic fields evolve over time. 

Dr. Joe Glaser serves as the Scientific Computations Specialist for NANOGrav and the Center of Gravitational Waves and Cosmology. He volunteers a portion of his time to the WVU Planetarium and Observatory, fostering a keen interest in scientific visualization, educational show production, and increasing the public's access to our facilities. His research expertise lies in the fields of planetary formation and exoplanetary sciences. He earned his Ph.D. in Physics from Drexel University in 2020, studying the dynamical evolution of planetary systems within Stellar Open Clusters. He serves on a rotation of multiple scientific and DEI working groups with colleagues across the globe. Being a product of both, he strongly supports initiatives focused on undergraduate research and “open source” projects.