Please join me in congratulating Wayne Hu on his appointment as the Paul Snowden Russell Distinguished Service Professor.

Congratulations Wayne!

John Carlstrom
Chair of Astronomy & Astrophysics,
Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor

Read in UChicago News

Related Links:
KICP Members: Wayne Hu

Dear Colleagues,

Please join me in congratulating Don York who has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society Service Award for Astronomy.

The RAS citation reads:
"Professor Donald York, as the Founding Director of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), was a key figure in the conception, design, construction, and initial operation of one of the most successful astronomical facilities of the 21st century. With its first-ever digital image of the entire northern high galactic latitude sky, homogeneously and painstakingly calibrated in a novel photometric system, plus millions of homogeneously obtained spectra, SDSS has touched every subfield of astronomy.

Multiple studies agree that SDSS is the most cited and most impactful facility in ground-based astronomy, or even all astronomy. More than 7,600 papers refer to SDSS in the title or abstract, and these publications have garnered roughly 400,000 citations. Twenty-five of these papers have 1,000 or more citations, and almost 800 have 100 or more citations.

Professor York enabled one of the most significant astronomical projects of our lifetimes, one that benefits the entire international community, and is a truly deserving recipient of the RAS Service Award."

Congratulations Don!

John Carlstrom,
Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor and Chair Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics

Related Links:
KICP Members: Donald G. York

Danielle Norcini

Danielle Norcini will receive her Ph.D. from the Wright Laboratory at Yale University in particle/nuclear physics. She helped lead the R&D and construction of the PROSPECT detector to measure neutrinos at very short distances from a nuclear reactor in a challenging background environment. Her thesis details a search for sterile neutrino oscillations and the world-leading measurement of the uranium-235 antineutrino energy spectrum. As a KICP and Grainger fellow, she plans to develop instruments to measure astrophysical neutrinos and other cosmic particles, probing fundamental physics and cosmology.

Yiming Zhong

I received my PhD from Stony Brook University in 2016 and I did my first postdoc at Boston University before coming to KICP. As a phenomenologist, I am interested in connecting theory to data. My work centers on the search for light dark matter and dark sectors at accelerator experiments or through observations of small-scale cosmological structure. At KICP, I hope to develop new ways to probe dark matter properties and investigate the puzzling anomalies in current cosmological observations.

Victor Buza

Victor Buza will receive his PhD from Harvard University. For his graduate career, he codeveloped the likelihood analysis framework used to analyze BICEP/Keck/Planck/WMAP data and place the tightest constraints on primordial gravitational wave to date. He was also the author of the performance-based forecasting framework that guided the optimization and design of CMB-S4, and determined the currently proposed baseline CMB-S4 instrument configuration. As a KICP Fellow Victor plans to work closely with the KICP community on theory and analysis for CMB polarization experiments (SPT-3G, BICEP/Keck, CMB-S4) and cross-correlations of CMB data with large-scale structure efforts (DES/LSST).

Jose Maria Ezquiaga

Jose Maria Ezquiaga will receive his PhD from the Universidad Autonoma de Madrid. His research focuses on probing the pillars of the standard cosmological model with gravitational waves. As a KICP and Einstein Fellow, Jose Maria will exploit LIGO's data to constrain the propagation of gravitational waves, the expansion of the Universe and the origin of the observed black-holes, anticipating as well how to improve such tests with the next generation of detectors, specially with the space antenna LISA.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Victor Buza; Jose Maria Ezquiaga; Danielle Norcini; Yiming Zhong
Scientific projects: BICEP2/The Keck Array/BICEP3; Dark Energy Survey (DES); Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST); Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO); South Pole Telescope (SPT)

Professor Lars Bergstrom from Stockholm University is currently visiting the KICP as a long-term sabbatical visitor until May 8. Lars is an Astroparticle Physicist and Cosmologist, who is world renowned for his work on many aspects of the Dark Matter problem. His research has touched on many areas of cosmological physics and he has made numerous fundamental contributions to the WIMP paradigm of dark matter, with indirect detection of annihilating WIMPs being a particular focus. Lars is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and was Scientific Secretary of its Nobel Committee for Physics from 2004-2015. During his visit Lars will be in office ERC 421 and welcomes visits from all KICP members interested in discussing science. Professor Bergstrom will present the April 17 KICP Colloquium.

Vadim will be taking Hubble fellowship to the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at Harvard. After 3 years of the Hubble fellowship he will continue there as an ITC fellow, position he was also offered as part of the process.

The program enables outstanding postdoctoral scientists to pursue independent research in any area of NASA Astrophysics, using theory, observation, experimentation, or instrument development. Each fellowship provides the awardee up to three years of support.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Andrey V. Kravtsov
KICP Students: Vadim Semenov

I am most pleased to report that Philip Mansfield has been selected to receive William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowships for the 2019-2020 academic year!

The award is one of the University of Chicago's highest honors and is given in recognition of outstanding achievement and professional promise.

Congratulations Phil!

John Carlstrom
Chair and Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor

Related Links:
KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom; Andrey V. Kravtsov
KICP Students: Philip Mansfield

I am most pleased to report that Maya Fishbach has been selected to receive William Rainey Harper Dissertation Fellowships for the 2019-2020 academic year!

The award is one of the University of Chicago's highest honors and is given in recognition of outstanding achievement and professional promise.

Congratulations Maya!

John Carlstrom
Chair and Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor

Related Links:
KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom; Daniel E. Holz
KICP Students: Maya Fishbach

Please join me in congratulating Taylor Hoyt on his appointment as the 2019 Brinson-Carnegie Graduate Fellow. Taylor is pursuing observational research aimed at improving the measurement of the Hubble Constant.

Congratulations Taylor!

John Carlstrom
Chair and Subramanyan Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor

Related Links:
KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom; Wendy L. Freedman
KICP Students: Taylor Hoyt

Congratulations to Vadim Semenov for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on "How Galaxies Form Stars: the Connection between Local and Global Star Formation in Galaxies".

Vadim has received a position of Hubble Fellow at the Institute for Theory and Computation, Harvard University.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Andrey V. Kravtsov
KICP Students: Vadim Semenov

Dear Colleagues,
I am thrilled to share that Wayne Hu has been selected to receive a Faculty Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching and Mentoring. This award honors faculty members for their achievements in classroom teaching and for their special contributions in encouraging the work of graduate students. We plan to recognize Wayne at PSD's Diploma and Hooding Ceremony on June 15.

Please join me in congratulating Wayne on this honor.

Angela V. Olinto
Dean of the Division of the Physical Sciences,
Albert A. Michelson Distinguished Service Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics

Related Links:
KICP Members: Wayne Hu; Angela V. Olinto

Congratulations to Zoheyr Doctor for successfully defending his Ph.D. dissertation on "Hearing and Seeing the Universe: Results from Gravitational-Wave and Optical Studies of Merging Neutron Stars and Black Holes".

"Zoheyr's thesis represents a major contribution to multi-messenger gravitational wave astronomy. He has published on a wide range of important topics, including a machine learning analysis of black hole waveforms, the first multi-messenger estimates for kilonova ejecta and r-process element production, and the leading observational constraints on electromagnetic counterparts to black hole mergers. Zoheyr's work is at the forefront of an entirely new and exciting field of science."
- Daniel Holz, Ph.D. advisor

Zoheyr has received a postdoc position in Ben Farr's group, University of Oregon.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Daniel E. Holz
KICP Students: Zoheyr Doctor
Scientific projects: Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO)