Rate My Professor Eric Hintz

Eric Hintz serves as Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Brigham Young University, where he has taught for over 25 years in the field of Space Science. He earned B.S. degrees in Physics and Astronomy from Case Western Reserve University in 1988 and a Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from Brigham Young University in 1995. His professional career at BYU includes postdoctoral research positions at the DRI Research Foundation (1996-1997) and RLH Research Foundation (1997-1998), followed by appointment as Assistant Professor from 1998 to 2006 and Associate Professor since 2006. Hintz received the NASA Rocky Mountain Space Grant Consortium Fellowship (1991-1994, 1995), NASA Space Grant Consortium Outstanding Dissertation Award (1996), Bear Lake Observatory Post-doctoral Fellowship (1996-1997), and West Mountain Observatory Post-doctoral Fellowship (1997-1998).

Hintz specializes in observational studies of variable stars across the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram, with a focus on pulsating variable stars including delta Scuti and Cepheids. His research involves developing arrays of robotic telescopes to monitor transiting exoplanets, solar system objects, and AGN variability, supporting efforts like KELT and TESS. Key publications include "An Examination of Pulsational Changes in the Classical Cepheid X Cygni" (Astronomical Journal, 2021, with T.B. Harding and M.L. Hintz), "TIC 172900988: A Transiting Circumbinary Planet Detected in One Sector of TESS Data" (Astronomical Journal, 2021, with V.B. Kostov et al.), "KELT-11b: A Highly Inflated Sub-Saturn Exoplanet Transiting the V=8 Subgiant HD 93396" (Astronomical Journal, 2017, with J. Pepper et al.), "Confirmation of Short Period Pulsating Variables Using an Array of Robotic Telescopes" (JAAVSO, 2020, with J.L. Hansen et al.), and "Period Changes in the delta Scuti Variable V2455 Cygni" (JAAVSO, 2024, with E.E. Banks et al.). He also conducts astronomy education research on mentored undergraduate projects, planetarium education, and head-mounted displays. Hintz holds service roles as Board Member of the American Association of Variable Star Observers (2023-present), Astrophysical Research Consortium (2022-present), and American Astronomical Society committees (2021-present), along with journal reviewing for New Astronomy, JAAVSO, and others. He has supervised numerous student theses and fostered undergraduate research in variable stars and exoplanets.