John M. Kovac

John Michael Kovac (born 1970) is an American physicist and astronomer. His cosmology research, conducted at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian in Cambridge, Massachusetts, focuses on observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) to reveal signatures of the physics that drove the birth of the universe, the creation of its structure, and its present-day expansion. Currently, Kovac is Professor of Astronomy and Physics at Harvard University.[1]

John M Kovac
Born25 October 1970
NationalityAmerican
Alma materPrinceton University
University of Chicago
Known forBICEP2, BICEP and Keck Array
Scientific career
FieldsExperimental Physics and Cosmology
InstitutionsCaltech
Harvard
ThesisDetection of Polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background using DASI
Doctoral advisorJohn Carlstrom

Education and early life

Kovac was born in Princeton, New Jersey. He attended Jesuit High School in Tampa, Florida.[2] He received a bachelor's degree in Mathematics from Princeton University. He went on to the University of Chicago to receive a Masters and Doctorate in Physics in 2004. His thesis advisor was John Carlstrom.

Career

He was the principal investigator of the BICEP2 telescope, which was part of the BICEP and Keck Array series of experiments.[3][4][5] Measurements announced on 17 March 2014 from the BICEP2 telescope appeared to support the idea of cosmic inflation, by reporting the first evidence for a primordial B-Mode pattern in the polarization of the CMB.[6][7][8] Further analysis revealed this result to be spurious, and that the signal had been contaminated by interstellar dust in the Milky Way.[9]

Prior to BICEP2, as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, Kovac worked on the Degree Angular Scale Interferometer led by John Carlstrom, which in 2002 announced the first detection of polarization in the CMB.[10] In 2003, Kovac moved to Caltech as a Millikan Postdoctoral Fellow, beginning work under Andrew Lange on the QUaD telescope and on BICEP1, the predecessor of BICEP2. After BICEP1's deployment to the South Pole in 2006, at Lange's invitation Kovac joined the research faculty of Caltech as a Kilroy Fellow and led the team that proposed BICEP2. In 2009 Kovac joined the faculty at Harvard University.[11]

Awards

In 2013 Kovac received the National Science Foundation Career Award.[12] He was a recipient of the 2014 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.[13] In 2011 Kovac was selected as a Sloan Research Fellow.[14] He was awarded the 2002–2003 Sugarman Award by the Enrico Fermi Institute.

References
  1. "Harvard Astronomy Department Website".
  2. Stockfisch, Jerome (19 March 2014). "Tampa education inspired head of Big Bang team". The Tampa Tribune. Retrieved 25 March 2014.
  3. "BICEP2 Website".
  4. "Award Abstract #0742818 Collaborative Research: BICEP2 and SPUD - A Search for Inflation with Degree-Scale Polarimetry from the South Pole". NSF.
  5. "Award Abstract #1044978 Collaborative Research: BICEP2 and SPUD - A Search for Inflation with Degree-Scale Polarimetry from the South Pole". NSF.
  6. Overbye, Dennis (2014-03-17). "Space Ripples Reveal Big Bang's Smoking Gun". The New York Times. Retrieved 19 March 2014.
  7. Overbye, Dennis (24 March 2014). "Ripples From the Big Bang". New York Times. Retrieved 24 March 2014.
  8. BICEP2 Collaboration, BICEP2; R Ade, P. A.; Aikin, R. W.; Barkats, D.; Benton, S. J.; Bischoff, C. A.; Bock, J. J.; Brevik, J. A.; Buder, I.; Bullock, E.; Dowell, C. D.; Duband, L.; Filippini, J. P.; Fliescher, S.; Golwala, S. R.; Halpern, M.; Hasselfield, M.; Hildebrandt, S. R.; Hilton, G. C.; Hristov, V. V.; Irwin, K. D.; Karkare, K. S.; Kaufman, J. P.; Keating, B. G.; Kernasovskiy, S. A.; Kovac, J. M.; Kuo, C. L.; Leitch, E. M.; Lueker, M.; et al. (2014). "BICEP2 I: Detection Of B-mode Polarization at Degree Angular Scales". Physical Review Letters. 112 (24): 241101. arXiv:1403.3985. Bibcode:2014PhRvL.112x1101B. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.112.241101. PMID 24996078. S2CID 22780831.
  9. Cowen, Ron (30 January 2015). "Gravitational waves discovery now officially dead". Nature. doi:10.1038/nature.2015.16830. S2CID 124938210.
  10. Kovac, J. M.; et al. (Dec 2002). "Detection of polarization in the cosmic microwave background using DASI". Nature (Submitted manuscript). 420 (6917): 772–787. arXiv:astro-ph/0209478. Bibcode:2002Natur.420..772L. doi:10.1038/nature01269. PMID 12490941. S2CID 4359884.
  11. Cowen, Ron (31 March 2014). "Cosmology: Polar star". Nature. Vol. 508, no. 7494. pp. 28–30. Bibcode:2014Natur.508...28C. doi:10.1038/508028a. Retrieved 1 April 2014.
  12. "John Kovac, Assistant Professor in Harvard's Astronomy and Physics departments, has been awarded the Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award by the National Science Foundation". Retrieved 2014-03-27.
  13. "The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers: Recipient Details: John Kovac". NSF.
  14. "Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships 2011" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-04-11. Retrieved 2014-03-27.
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