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NEWS ARCHIVE

In the Science section of the Forbes "30 Under 30," you'll find three scientists with Harvard ITC affiliations: One is the Harvard undergrad Henry Lin (at the ripe age of 19!), working with ITC Director Avi Loeb. The second is a former Loeb graduate student, Tony Pan, who now works as the principal scientist in a new company. Finally, Konstantin Batygin joined the faculty of Caltech after his postdoc work at the ITC. Congrats to all!

ITC Director Avi Loeb is interviewed by the New York Times.

The predicted existence of relativistic stars by ITC Director Avi Loeb and ITC Postdoc James Guillochon was covered by Time Magazine. The abstract and link to research article are available on ArXiv.

ITC Director Avi Loeb received a visit from eminent astrophysicist Professor Martin Rees. See the photo on the new ITC Facebook page.

Karin Oberg, Assistant Professor of Astronomy, was awarded the prestigious Packard fellowship. Her citation reads: "Oberg is an astrochemist. She combines ice experiments and radio astronomy to explore the chemistry present during planet formation. This chemistry regulates the compositions and habitability of nascent planets, and is thus key to our understanding of the origins of life." For more details, see the public announcement at Packard

Avi Loeb, Frank B. Baird, Jr. Professor of Science, has been appointed to serve on the Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA), which is the principal forum for issues connected with the fields of physics and astronomy of the National Academies.

Current and former ITC Post-doctoral Fellows Shy Genel and Mark Vogelsberger, in collaboration with researchers at several institutions have created the first realistic virtual universe using a computer simulation called "Illustris" that can recreate 13 billion years of cosmic evolution in a cube 350 million light-years on a side with unprecedented resolution. These results, reported in the journal Nature. The video is featured in the New York Times.

A NASA press release describes results of the deepest X-ray observation of a Type Ia supernova ever, which allowed ITC Post-Doctoral fellow Raffaella Margutti, in collaboration with others at CfA, to put meaningful constraints to the progenitor system: Nasa Although nothing was detected in 50 ks of Chandra, the 0-photon image was apparently worthy of the NASA Picture-of-the-day: Astronomy Picture of the Day

Professor of Astronomy, Daniel Eisenstein, has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Philip M. Sadler--F.W. Wright Senior Lecturer in the Department of Astronomy and Director, Science Education Department--was recognized recently by the International Planetarium Society at its meeting in Beijing. Phil received the society's Technology and Innovation Award for his 1977 invention of the Starlab portable planetarium. These inflatable planetariums are now in use by thousands of museums and school systems world-wide, reaching millions of children. We have one that is used by CfA staff and students when visiting schools, by local teachers, and by Phil himself for teaching Astronomy 2.

In light of the recent BICEP2 discovery of cosmological gravitational waves, former ITC Research Scholar Anna Ijjas presented two lectures reviewing the principals of inflation, entitled "Introduction to Cosmic Inflation: Principles and Challenges" that can be viewed at these links: Part I Video + Slides and Part II Video + Slides.

ITC and Harvard University Society of Fellows post-doctoral fellow Sayan Chakraborti has been awarded the Indian National Science Academy (INSA) Medal for Young Scientist (2014).

An August 2014 report by NPR chronicles Avi Loeb's search for extraterrestrial smog may actually be a good way to search for alien intelligence.

The April 2014 issue of Discover chronicles Avi Loeb's search for our universe's earliest gas clouds, galaxies and stars to tell the scientific version of Genesis.

In Nature, Avi Loeb and collaborator Paulo Pani, of the University of Lisbon in Portugal, posit that primordial black holes are unlikely to exist in numbers sufficient to explain dark matter

The 2014 Rossi Prize of the American Astronomical Society has been awarded to Doug Finkbeiner, together with Tracy Slatyer, and Meng Su, former students and ITC members, "for their discovery, in gamma rays, of the large unanticipated Galactic structure called the 'Fermi Bubbles.'"

Rebekah Dawson and Matthew Walker received the Martin and Beate Block Award for Promising Young Physicists at the 2013 Aspen Center Particle Astrophysics Conference.

Click here for photos from the sixth annual ITC Soccer Cup match, August 16, 2014.

Click here for photos from the Fall 2014 ITC Reception, September 14, 2014.

Astronomy for Everyone, a neuro-diversity workshop for high school kids with Dyslexia, ADHD, and/or Autism Spectrum Disorders, took place on April 25 2014. Sponsored by the Harvard-Smithsonian CfA, the ITC and the LVL.

Avi Loeb's New York Times Quote of the Day: "The experience is as exciting for astronomers as it is for parents taking the first photos of their infant eating", on the prospect of observing a black hole devour a gas cloud, accompanied the article entitled "It's Snack Time in the Cosmos".

In Nature, Avi Loeb theorizes that planets orbiting the first stars could have been habitable, challenging arguments for a multiverse. "Life possible in the early Universe"

The 'Dark Energy String Quartet', performed a holiday season concert, featuring performances by ITC Visiting Scholar Chung-Pei Ma, violin, Brian Clague, violin, Derek Katz, viola, and Ti Bodenheimer, cello, on December 4th, 2013. Click here for photos.

ITC Faculty members Alicia Soderberg and John Johnson, along with former ITC Post-doctoral Fellow Anna Frebel are named among Astronomy Magazine's "Rising Stars" in the July 2013 issue.

Ramesh Narayan, Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard University, has been been elected to membership in the National Academy of Sciences, in recognition of his distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

Jim Moran has been selected to receive the 2013 Grote Reber Gold Medal in Physics for his pioneering work in the development and application of spectroscopic Very Long Baseline Interferometry in the field of Radio Astronomy.

ITC Director Avi Loeb and Ohio State University Professor Scott Gaudi proposed, in 2003, a new "Doppler Beaming" method for detecting planets, which was just used to discover "Einstein's Planet" Kepler 76b, as reported by TIME Magazine.

ITC visitor Paolo Pani, and ITC Director Avi Loeb excluded the possibility that the dark matter is made of spinning primordial black holes in the mass range between the masses of the moon and the Sun. A report about their Physical Review D paper appeared in TIME magazine.

ITC Visiting Scholar Richard Ellis delivered a special colloquium talk entitled "Observations of Star-Forming Galaxies During the Reionization Era" that can be viewed here.

In the Harvard Gazette article, "Tweaks to the Universe" Avi Loeb discusses new findings on the age of the universe and its rate of expansion.

Avi Loeb's book, "How Did the First Stars and Galaxies Form?", (Princeton University Press, 2010), has been selected for the Chambliss Astronomical Writing Award by the American Astronomical Society.

Avi Loeb has been awarded the 2013 Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at the University of Melbourne in Australia, (read more...)

Irwin Shapiro won the 2013 Einstein Prize of The American Physical Society, "for his contributions to experimental solar system tests of relativistic theories of gravity, (read more...)

Time Magazine featured Avi Loeb and co-author, Dan Maoz, of Tel Aviv University's paper "Detecting bio-markers in habitable-zone earths transiting white dwarfs" in a Science & Space article: Could Tiny Stars Be Home to Mirror Earths?

The Graduate School of Arts & Sciences Bulletin reviews highlights and the future of the ITC in an article entitled the "State of the Stars".

Avi Loeb was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on October 6, 2012. Please click here for photographs of the event.

Mark Vogelsberger, Debora Sijacki, Dusan Keres, Paul Torrey, Lars Hernquist of the ITC/CfA and Volker Springel (HITS) simulated 14 billion years of cosmic history. (read more...)

Alicia Soderberg has been selected as a 2012 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, an award given to early-career scientists and scholars in recognition of achievement and the potential to contribute substantially to their fields.

Avi Loeb delivered a series of four lectures as the recipient of the 2012 Galileo Chair ("Cattedra Galileiana") at Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa, Italy. Recorded video of the talks are available at http://tv.sns.it/eventispeciali. View the poster here.

Avi Loeb has been been elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. Founded in 1780, the Academy is an independent policy research center that conducts multidisciplinary studies of complex and emerging problems

Nine ITC members (not counting incoming postdocs) were awarded prize fellowships in 2012: Laura Blecha, Smadar Naoz, and Meng Su were awarded an Einstein fellowship, and Kaitlin Kratter, Matt McQuinn, Stella Offner, Yue Shen, Jack Steiner, and Mark Vogelsberger were awarded a Hubble fellowship. This totals one third of all the new Einstein/Hubble fellowship awarded worldwide in 2012. (read more...)

The Kavli Foundation spoke with George Becker, Richard Ellis and Avi Loeb about the hunt for the first stars and galaxies. A transcript of the conversation may be found here.

ITC scientists Elena D'Onghia, Lars Hernquist and Mark Vogelsberger merged astrophysics and art in the production of a spiral arm movie, recently selected for exhibition at the Kimball Art Center, home to the Sundance Film Festival, in Park City, Utah. The exhibit "The Art of Science" runs from February 11 thorugh March 7, 2012.

ITC post-doctoral fellow Raffaella Margutti has won a mention to the 2011 Livio Gratton prize as one of the three "best Italian PhD thesis in Astronomy over past two years" for her work on gamma-ray bursts.

Avi Loeb gave the May 12, 2011 public lecture at the Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History - "How Did the First Stars and Galaxies Form?" - featured on UC television. To view a video, click here.

A paper by Avi Loeb and Edwin Turner in the journal Astrobiology, suggesting that city lights could reveal E.T. civilization, generated numerous mentions in the mainstream media including articles in Time Magazine and the Boston Globe.

It is with great sadness that we report the death of our dear friend and colleague Myron "Mike" Lecar. Click here to read an obituary.

Jack Burns (U. Colorado) gave a talk on "Into the Dark Ages: The Dark Ages Radio Explorer" on May 23. Click here to view the video.

The ITC and ITAMP (Institute for Theoretical Atomic Molecular and Optical Physics) jointly organized a Hydrogen Cosmology Workshop on May 18-20, 2011. Click here for more information. Click here for a slide show of pictures from the workshop.

Alar Toomre (MIT) gave a talk on "Spiral Structure: What Remains?" on April 11, 2011 as part of the ITC Galactic Dynamics Pizza Lunch series. To view a video, click here.

ITC Director Avi Loeb gave the CfA Author’s Night talk on his recent book, How Did the First Stars and Galaxies Form (Princeton University Press, 2010), on Thursday, October 21, 2010. To view a video of the talk, click here.

Everyone at the ITC is profoundly saddened by the loss of our colleague and friend John Huchra. An obituary appeared in the Harvard Gazette (click here to read it). We miss him dearly.

ITC Director Avi Loeb spoke on "Future Frontiers in Astrophysics: Suggestions for Young Researchers" on September 7, 2010. To view a video of the talk, click here.

On November 1, 2010, Avi Loeb delivered the Harvard Physics Colloquium on "How Did the First Stars and Black Holes Form?" To view the video, click here.

 

 

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