David Bohlender was awarded his Ph.D. at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) in London Ontario in 1988.  His supervisor was John D. Landstreet.  He held an NSERC PDF with Gordon Walker at the University of British Columbia and from 1992 through 1996 was a Canadian Resident Astronomer at the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT) on the Big Island of Hawaii.  He has been an astronomer at the Canadian Astronomy Data Centre (CADC) of the National Research Council of Canada’s (NRC) National Science Infrastructure (NSI) Portfolio in Victoria, BC, since November 1996.

Within the CADC David is the Project Scientist for the Gemini Observatory, MOST Space Telescope, and Dominion Astrophysical Observatory Science Archives and maintains the popular International Astronomy Meetings List.  He also manages the operation of the two Dominion Astrophysical Observatory’s telescopes, including the venerable 1.8-m Plaskett telescope.

His research activities involve the use of very high resolution and high signal-to-noise optical and near-infrared spectroscopic and spectropolarimetric observations of stars to investigate a number of puzzles in stellar astrophysics as well as the interstellar medium. These include studies of the magnetic fields of early-type stars, unusual chemical abundances and circumstellar environments of the hottest magnetic Bp stars, isotopic abundance anomalies in peculiar stars, interactions between giant extra-solar planets and their host stars, as well as an attempt to identify specific molecular carriers of the diffuse interstellar bands.