Rachel Bean | |
---|---|
Title | Professor of astronomy and senior associate dean of math and science, Cornell University College of Arts and Sciences |
Awards | Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers Cottrell Scholar Award NASA Group Achievement Award |
Academic background | |
Education | University of Cambridge Imperial College London |
Academic work | |
Discipline | Astronomy |
Sub-discipline | Dark energy |
Institutions | Cornell University |
Rachel Bean is a cosmologist,theoretical astrophysicist, [1] professor of astronomy, [2] and senior associate dean for math and science at the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University.
Bean received her bachelor's degree in natural sciences from the University of Cambridge in 1995. After graduation,she worked in the strategy division at Accenture,and then obtained her master's degree in 1999 and doctorate degree in 2002 in theoretical physics from Imperial College London. Following this,she was a postdoctoral research Fellow for Princeton University before being hired as a professor for Cornell's Department of Astronomy.
In 2005,Bean became a faculty member at Cornell University, [3] where her research focuses on cosmological tests of the nature of dark energy and gravity,and the physical origins of primordial inflation,using data from large-scale structure and the cosmic microwave background. She is actively involved in a number of international astronomical surveys,including the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST),the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI),and the Euclid space mission. [1]
During her time at Cornell University,Bean served as the Senior Associate Dean for the university's Undergraduate Education department,where she was responsible for designing the curriculum,overseeing admissions into the program,and career development,among other things. On July 13,2023,Bean succeeded Ray Jayawardhana as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Cornell University, [4] where she was later named the Senior Associate Dean for Math and Science. While she held this position within the university,she was partially responsible for introducing the data science minor to the school's Undergraduate Program.
During her time spent on her many collaborative experiments,Bean was the collaboration leader on the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration,which involved more than 500 international scientists. She also served as a member of the U.S. Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Council.
The cosmic microwave background,or relic radiation,is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. With a standard optical telescope,the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dark. However,a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope detects a faint background glow that is almost uniform and is not associated with any star,galaxy,or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum. The accidental discovery of the CMB in 1965 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s.
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP),originally known as the Microwave Anisotropy Probe,was a NASA spacecraft operating from 2001 to 2010 which measured temperature differences across the sky in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) –the radiant heat remaining from the Big Bang. Headed by Professor Charles L. Bennett of Johns Hopkins University,the mission was developed in a joint partnership between the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and Princeton University. The WMAP spacecraft was launched on 30 June 2001 from Florida. The WMAP mission succeeded the COBE space mission and was the second medium-class (MIDEX) spacecraft in the NASA Explorer program. In 2003,MAP was renamed WMAP in honor of cosmologist David Todd Wilkinson (1935–2002),who had been a member of the mission's science team. After nine years of operations,WMAP was switched off in 2010,following the launch of the more advanced Planck spacecraft by European Space Agency (ESA) in 2009.
Planck was a space observatory operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) from 2009 to 2013. It was an ambitious project that aimed to map the anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at microwave and infrared frequencies,with high sensitivity and angular resolution. The mission was highly successful and substantially improved upon observations made by the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP).
Yun Wang is a poet and cosmologist. She is originally from Gaoping,a small town near Zunyi,in Guizhou Province,China.
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Norman C. Jarosik is a US astrophysicist. He has worked on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) whose observations of Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR) have provided significant insights into cosmology.
Mustapha Ishak-Boushaki is a theoretical physicist,cosmologist and professor at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is known for his contributions to the studies of cosmic acceleration and dark energy,gravitational lensing,and testing alternatives to general relativity;as well as his authorship of Testing General Relativity in Cosmology,a review article published in Living Reviews in Relativity. He was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2021 and as a fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) with the quote:"For distinguished contributions to the field of theoretical cosmology,particularly for testing modifications to general relativity at cosmological scales,and for sustained excellence in teaching and mentoring of students."
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