Rate My Professor Roberto Abraham

Roberto Abraham is a University Professor in the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. He earned a BSc from the University of British Columbia and a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Oxford in 1992. Following postdoctoral positions at the Herzberg Institute of the National Research Council of Canada and at the University of Cambridge, he joined the University of Toronto faculty, where he served as department chair from 2020 to 2025 and is currently on sabbatical as co-founder and co-CEO of the Dragonfly Focused Research Organization.

Abraham’s research centers on galaxy formation and evolution, galaxy morphology, and observational cosmology, with particular emphasis on high-redshift galaxies and the low-surface-brightness universe. He co-developed the Dragonfly Telephoto Array and has contributed to discoveries including ultra-diffuse galaxies and galaxies lacking dark matter. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and has received the Jackson-Gwilt Medal from the Royal Astronomical Society, the P. G. Martin Award from the Canadian Astronomical Society, an NSERC Steacie Memorial Fellowship, a Killam Research Fellowship, a Premier’s Research Excellence Award, and the University of Toronto Outstanding Teaching Award. Abraham previously served as president of the Canadian Astronomical Society and as chair of Cycle 2 of the James Webb Space Telescope Time Allocation Committee.