Research Interests My main research effort is in experimental cosmology, primarily measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background, thermal radiation from the hot plasma which filled the universe for its first few hundred thousand years. The Microwave Anisotropy Probe is a NASA midex mission now in orbit at L2 measuring the anisotropy, or angular variation of this radiation at five microwave frequencies. In the photo at right, I am taking the calibration loads off the spacecraft for the last time at Kennedy Space Center a few weeks before our June 2001 launch. (photo: Michele Limon)

Please see our excellent public web page for explanations of the goals and status of the experiment.

We are also involved in eforts to build two new instruments each of which will facilitate a big step forward in exploring the universe at high redshift. BLAST, the Balloon Borne Large Aperture Submillimetre Telescope will perform deep surveys at 250, 350 and 500 microns, wavelengths near to the emission peak of distant galaxies, emission which is unfortunately blocked by our atmosphere.

SCUBA2, is a revolutionary new camera for submillimetre wavelengths being built for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It incorporates new superconducting bolometer arrays being developed at at NIST into a camera which can map the sky 1000 times faster than current instruments. Teaching: I teach Physics 200: Quantum Mechanics and Relativity an intrduction to Modern physics, and also Physics 102 for the special program Coordinated Science Last year my CSP students gave me hair gel, and my daughter let me use it just once. (This photo gives a bit better impression of what I look like than the MAP photo.)