Congratulations to Matthew Becker for successfully defending his PhD dissertation on "CALCLENS: Weak Lensing Simulations for Large-Area Sky Surveys and Second-Order Effects in Cosmic Shear Power Spectra."

"Matt's thesis work, in which he has developed a novel algorithm of computing distorsions of galaxy images using data from cosmological simulations, significantly advances our ability to make realistic theoretical predictions for upcoming wide area surveys aiming to map matter distribution in the universe on large scales."
- Andrey Kravtsov, PhD advisor

Matthew has received a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford University.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Andrey V. Kravtsov
KICP Students: Matthew Becker

Stereoscopic view of the first COUPP-60 bubble at SNOLAB. Visible on the sides are the strings of piezoelectric sensors used to discriminate between alpha radioactivity and nuclear recoils like those expected from dark matter interactions.

Read more >>

Related Links:
KICP Members: Juan I. Collar
Scientific projects: Chicagoland Observatory for Underground Particle Physics (COUPP)

Two KICP postdocs Ali Vanderveld and Elise Jennings as well as Ph.D. students Abigail Crites, Alissa Bans and Brittany Kamai took part in the "Expanding Your Horizons" (EYH) outreach event.
"Expanding Your Horizons" is a one day symposium for middle school girls showing them the exciting and diverse experiences science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) careers have to offer. Volunteers from the Chicago STEM community organize short, hands-on workshops to directly engage with the girls at a critical time in their development. EYH is a nationally recognized program and the University of Chicago is proud bring it to the Windy City!

Related Links:
KICP Members: Elise Jennings; Ali Vanderveld
KICP Students: Alissa Bans; Abigail T. Crites; Brittany Kamai

JEM-EUSO website

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has awarded a $4.4 million grant to a collaboration of scientists at five U.S. universities and NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to help build a telescope for deployment on the International Space Station in 2017.

The U.S. collaboration is part of a 13-nation effort to build the 2.5-meter ultraviolet telescope, called the Extreme Universe Space Observatory. The telescope will monitor the Earth's atmosphere searching for the mysterious source of the most energetic particles in the universe from the ISS's Japanese Experiment Module.

The source of these energetic particles, called ultra high-energy cosmic rays, has remained one of the great mysteries of science since French physicist Pierre Auger discovered them 75 years ago. These cosmic rays consist of protons and other subatomic scraps of matter that fly through the universe at almost light speed.

"The science goal is to discover the sources of ultra high-energy cosmic rays by observing their traces in the atmosphere looking 250 miles from the ISS down to the surface," said Angela Olinto, professor in astronomy & astrophysics at the University of Chicago. Olinto leads the U.S. collaboration, which includes scientists at the Colorado School of Mines, University of Alabama in Huntsville, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and the Marshall Space Flight Center.

Read more >>

Related Links:
KICP Members: Angela V. Olinto

On February 19th, the Society of Women in Physics(SWIP) and the KICP joined forces to host "Pizza with Professors," a dinner and discussion about the joys and stresses of pursuing a career in physics. Professors and post-doctoral fellows from the KICP joined faculty from the Physics department in speaking with around 50 undergraduate Physics majors. The event was held in the Kersten Family Atrium of the University's Gordon Center for the Integrative Sciences. Participants left with a better appreciation of what a career in physics or a related field ultimately requires.

Slide show

Related Links:
KICP Members: Bradford A. Benson; Hsiao-Wen Chen; Joshua A. Frieman; Daniel Holz; Angela V. Olinto; M. Ted Ressell; Ali Vanderveld

Toshihiro Fujii of the Institute for Cosmic Ray Research at the University of Tokyo will be visiting the KICP from April 1, 2013 until March 31, 2015. Toshihiro will be hosted by Paolo Privitera and will be working with Chicago members of the Pierre Auger Observatory. He intends to study the mass composition of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays (UHECR) and work on developing a large ground array of fluorescence detectors for UHECR detection.
Hayato Motohashi of the Research Center for the Early Universe at the University of Tokyo will visit the KICP between September 17, 2013 and September 16, 2015. Hayato will be hosted by Wayne Hu during his stay. His research interests include theoretical studies of inflation, dark energy, and modified theories of gravity.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Wayne Hu; Paolo Privitera
Scientific projects: Pierre Auger Observatory (AUGER)

Tim Linden will join the KICP as a Fellow after finishing up his degree at UC Santa Cruz. Tim's research focuses on the indirect detection of particle dark matter with a particular interest in separating potential dark matter signals from astrophysical backgrounds.

Chris Sheehy will join the KICP as a Fellow after receiving his degree from the UofC. He has spent significant time at the University of Minnesota as well. Chris is a CMB experimentalist who has worked extensively on the search for B-mode polarization on the BICEP and Keck Array experiments. At the KICP, Chris will continue on those experiments while contributing his expertise to the SPT project.

Austin Joyce will join us as a joint EFI/McCormick and KICP Fellow. Austin is currently at Penn where his research has focused on applications of quantum field theory to cosmology. Areas that he has been particularly active in are formal aspects of inflationary universe theories and investigations of galileon theories to explain the late time acceleration of the Universe.

The DAMIC (DArk Matter In CCDs) experiment has been switched on in the SNOLAB Canadian Laboratory, 6800 feet underground. The installation of the 10 g detector involved members of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP) at the University of Chicago and of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory. DAMIC employs 250 micron thick CCDs to measure nuclear recoils induced by the Weakly Interactive Massive Particles (WIMPs) that may constitute the mysterious dark matter in the Universe. The unprecedented low energy threshold of the experiment, 40 eV, is particularly well suited for the discovery of light mass WIMPs in the few GeV range. WIMPs in this mass range may explain results from the DAMA/LIBRA, CoGent and CRESST experiments. Nuclear recoils produce signals that are readily distinguishable from the background induced by cosmic rays and electromagnetic interactions, thanks to the 15 micron pixel size of the CCD. Privitera's group at KICP, including Fellow Alvaro Chavarria and graduate student Jing Zhou, is now working on the commissioning of the experiment and data analysis. The DAMIC experiment at SNOLAB is the first step towards a 100 g detector using the CCD technology.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Alvaro Chavarria; Paolo Privitera
KICP Students: Jing Zhou

The Division of Astrophysics of the American Physical Society selected KICP Associate Fellow Ryan Keisler as a recipient of their Early Career Recognition Award, the so-called "Young Stars Award." Keisler is a Hubble Fellow at the KICP at the University of Chicago. His research is focused on investigating physics beyond the standard model through detailed measurements and analysis of the cosmic microwave background and the growth of structure in the universe. He is a key member of the South Pole Telescope project, working on all aspects of the project from developing new instrumentation, to detailed cosmological analysis of the data. In recognition of the award, Keisler will be giving an invited lecture on his work at the April 2013 APS meeting in Denver, Colorado.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Ryan Keisler
Scientific projects: South Pole Telescope (SPT)

Robert Conn, President of the Kavli Foundation, visited The University of Chicago, and the KICP in particular, on November 14. During his visit, Dr. Conn met with many of the University's top officials, enjoyed a lunch with KICP Senior Members, and toured the KICP facility. His visit was capped off by a reception for all Kavli Institute members where the KICP Fellows as well as other members of the community presented their latest research results in a "shotgun" poster session.

Congratulations to Christopher Greer for successfully defending his PhD dissertation on "Calibrating Optical Richness using Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Observations."

"Chris Greer made critical contributions to the building and deploying of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Array (SZA), an interferometric array of 3.5 meter mm-wave telescopes located at the CARMA site in California. He used the SZA to image the SZ effect for a sample of galaxy clusters selected by their richness in the SDSS maxBCG cluster catalog. His thesis provides the first joint calibration of the SZ and optical mass-observable relation. This work is important for using cluster surveys for constraining cosmology, in particular the nature of dark energy, and it provides the ground work for the upcoming joint analysis of the large South Pole Telescope and Dark Energy Survey data sets."
- John Carlstrom, PhD advisor

Christopher has received a postdoctoral researcher position at Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona.

Related Links:
KICP Members: John E. Carlstrom
KICP Students: Christopher Greer

The MIDAS (MIcrowave Detection of Air Showers) experiment has been recently installed at the Pierre Auger Observatory in Malargue, Argentina. MIDAS employs a novel technique to detect ultra-high energy cosmic rays, based on microwave emission from the cosmic ray shower developing in the atmosphere. Results from a prototype telescope, which was mounted at the 4.5 meter parabolic dish on the roof of the Kersten Physics Teaching Center at the University of Chicago, have been recently published on Physical Review D. Following the successful run in Chicago, the MIDAS camera and electronics were disassembled and shipped to Argentina, where simultaneous detection of ultra-high energy cosmic rays with the Pierre Auger Observatory will be pursued. Former KICP fellow Pedro Facal and graduate student Chris Williams traveled to Argentina between August and September to deploy the instrument on a new 5 meter parabolic dish located close the Los Leones Fluorescence Detector. The installation was completed in three weeks, and commissioning and calibration of the telescope are undergoing. MIDAS will take data for about a year searching for events detected in coincidence with the Pierre Auger Observatory.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Pedro Facal; Paolo Privitera
KICP Students: Christopher Williams
Scientific projects: Microwave Detection of Air Showers (MIDAS)

The Directors of the six Kavli Institutes in astrophysics -- Michael Turner, KICP; Jackie Hewitt, MKI at MIT; Roger Blandford, KIPAC at Stanford; George Efstathiou, KICC in Cambridge; Xiao-wei Liu, KIAA in Beijing; and Hitoshi Murayama, KIPMU in Japan -- met in Oslo, Norway during the Kavli Prize week to discuss new ways that the Kavli astrophysics institutes can cooperate.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Michael S. Turner

Congratulations to KICP graduate student Christopher Williams, who was awarded a 2012 CCAPP Price Prize for his work on novel methods for the detection of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays, which include the MIcrowave Detection of Air Showers (MIDAS) experiment. The Price Prize is awarded annually to graduate students in recognition of research excellence in areas closely related to CCAPP science initiatives. The prize announcement states that "Williams is an experimentalist; he is working on new techniques to detect the highest-energy particles in the universe, seeking clues to their unknown origins." Winners spend an extended period visiting CCAPP, give a Price Prize seminar, and receive an honorarium.

Dr. Pliny A. and Margaret H. Price Prize in Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics

Related Links:
KICP Students: Christopher Williams
Scientific projects: Microwave Detection of Air Showers (MIDAS)

Congratulations to Melanie Simet for successfully defending her PhD dissertation on "Galaxy cluster center detection methods with weak lensing."

"Melanie has studied weak gravitational lensing caused by galaxy clusters. She led the effort to measure this lensing signal in Stripe 82 of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, with results that will help calibrate cluster masses and begin the community on the road to measuring tomography. For her thesis, Melanie studied the important effect that it is difficult to locate the true center of a galaxy cluster. This "mis-ceterning" problem leads to incorrect mass determinations. By using a combination of simulations and data from SDSS, Melanie quantified both the effect and various algorithms proposed to address it."
- Scott Dodelson, PhD advisor

Melanie has received a postdoctoral position at the Carnegie Mellon University.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Scott Dodelson
KICP Students: Melanie Simet
Scientific projects: Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS)

Congratulations to Samuel Leitner for successfully defending his PhD dissertation on "The Star Formation History of Disk Galaxies & Implications for Simulations."

"In his thesis paper Sam has derived star formation histories of galaxies, which are still forming stars now, using a variety of observations on how star formation rate depends on stellar mass of galaxies as a function of cosmic epoch. Remarkably, the results show that galaxies such as our Milky Way have formed more than 80% of their stars over the last ten billion years of the evolution, and less than 20% during the first three billion years. This result is at variance with most simulations of galaxy formation and may help to explain why simulations generally fail to produce late-type disk galaxies with small bulges. In his paper, Sam has also uncovered a curious discrepancy between the star formation histories of dwarf galaxies derived using the method he used and those deduced from the color-magnitude diagram of stars for nearby dwarfs."
- Andrey Kravtsov, PhD advisor

Samuel has received a Prize Postdoctoral fellow position in the Center for Theory and Computation at the University of Maryland.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Andrey V. Kravtsov
KICP Students: Samuel N. Leitner

The KICP announces the 2013 Postdoctoral Research Fellowship opportunity. Scientists who have or expect a PhD in Physics, Astrophysics or related fields between September 2009 and September 2013 are invited to apply. Successful applicants will be expected to conduct original research in experimental, observational, numerical or theoretical cosmology in an active interdisciplinary environment. Postdoctoral Scholars are appointed to renewable one-year terms, up to three years. Our positions carry a competitive salary and benefits package. Institute Fellows have the freedom to work on any of the efforts in the Institute.

Research at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP), based at the University of Chicago, is focused on interdisciplinary topics in cosmological physics: studying the inflationary era, characterizing dark energy, and identifying the constituents of the dark matter. Experimental studies of the CMB (polarization anisotropy and the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect); analysis of cosmological data including CMB data and large-scale structure survey data; analysis of Sloan Digital Sky Survey data; development of the Dark Energy Survey; gravitational lensing studies; experimental particle astrophysics; direct detection of dark matter particles and numerous topics in theoretical cosmology constitute the current slate of activities. The KICP also has active visitors, symposia, and education/outreach programs.

To apply please visit the KICP Postdoctoral Research Fellowship website.

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Congratulations to Christopher Kelso for successfully defending his PhD dissertation on "Recent Results in Dark Matter Direct Detection Experiments."

"Chris' research has been focused on dark matter, and interpretations of data from a number of underground experiments designed to search for it. Particularly exciting has been his work on dark matter interpretations of the signals reported by the CoGeNT, CRESST and DAMA experiments. While we cannot say for certain yet whether these experiments are seeing dark matter particles, Chris' work has certainly helped to make these experiments and their anomalous results a "hot topic" among particle physicists and cosmologists."
- Dan Hooper, PhD advisor

Christopher has received a postdoctoral scholar position at the University of Utah.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Daniel Hooper
KICP Students: Christopher M. Kelso

Congratulations to Eva Wuyts for successfully defending her PhD dissertation on "A Magnified View of High Redshift Star Formation."

Related Links:
KICP Members: Michael D. Gladders
KICP Students: Eva Wuyts

Prof. Stephan S. Meyer will share the $500,000 award of the 2012 Gruber Cosmology Prize with NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) lead Charles Bennett and other colleagues from the team.

The WMAP team used observations of the so-called "echo of the Big Bang," the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation, to determine the universe's vital statistics - its age, content, geometry, and origin. This feat in turn has helped transform cosmology itself into a precision science.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Stephan S. Meyer
Scientific projects: Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP)

KICP is pleased to announce that Elise Jennings has been awarded a Springer Thesis Prize for her thesis "Simulations of Dark Energy Cosmologies".

Simulations of Dark Energy Cosmologies
A major outstanding problem in physics is understanding the nature of the dark energy that is driving the accelerating expansion of the Universe. This thesis makes a significant contribution by demonstrating, for the first time, using state-of-the-art computer simulations, that the interpretation of future galaxy survey measurements is far more subtle than is widely assumed, and that a major revision to our models of these effects is urgently needed. The work contained in the thesis was used by the WiggleZ dark energy survey to measure the growth rate of cosmic structure in 2011 and had a direct impact on the design of the surveys to be conducted by the European Space Agency's Euclid mission, a 650 million euro project to measure dark energy.

Springer Theses Award
Springer Theses is restricted to truly outstanding original work that makes a substantial contribution to research in its field. The author of each thesis accepted into the series will receive a prize of €500. Theses will be published both in print and in Springer's prominent eBook programme, thus becoming accessible to millions of readers worldwide through SpringerLink. The prestige and visibility associated with the prize-winning publication will help to further the career of deserving students.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Elise Jennings

I am pleased to report that Angela Olinto has accepted appointment as Chair of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics for a term of three years, effective October 1, 2012.
Thank you Angela! You can count on the support of us all!

- Rocky Kolb
Chair of the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics

Related Links:
KICP Members: Edward W. Kolb; Angela V. Olinto

Congratulations to Immanuel Buder for successfully defending his PhD dissertation on "Measurement of the CMB Polarization at 95 GHz from QUIET."

Immanuel has received a postdoctoral fellow position at Harvard College Observatory.

Related Links:
KICP Members: Stephan S. Meyer
KICP Students: Immanuel Buder
Scientific projects: Q/U Imaging ExperimenT (QUIET)