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Rob Simcoe is a native of Westborough, Massachusetts, who developed an interest in astronomy through telescope making as a family hobby, including trips to the Stellafane convention. As an undergraduate, he was involved in the development of a photometric camera for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey before moving to Caltech for graduate school. There, he collaborated with Mark Metzger on the construction of a prime focus camera for the 200-inch Hale Telescope at Palomar Observatory, completing a thesis on chemical enrichment in the intergalactic medium with Wal Sargent, using data from the Keck Telescopes. In 2003, he joined MIT as a Pappalardo Postdoctoral Fellow and utilized the newly commissioned 6.5-meter Magellan Telescopes. He became a faculty member in 2006. Over the years, he has installed the FIRE infrared spectrometer on Magellan and has been instrumental in exploring cool stars in the nearby universe as well as in the discoveries and characterization of high-redshift quasars and measurements of intergalactic matter from a billion years after the Big Bang. His research group is currently focused on the construction of a new hyperspectral imager for Magellan, named LLAMAS, which is dedicated to conducting optical surveys of transients in the infrared sky, with preparations for observations with the upcoming James Webb Space Telescope. In 2019, Simcoe was appointed Director of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research.