User:Commofc/sandbox
Peter Lawrence Capak | |
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| Alma mater | University of Hawaii at Manoa University of British Columbia |
| Known for | Cosmology, Structure Formation, Dark Matter, Dark Energy Galaxy Evolution |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Astronomy, Machine Learning, Space Sciences |
| Institutions | California Institute of Technology Cosmic DAWN Center |
| Website | Peter Capak research website |
Peter Lawrence Capak is a staff scientist and member of the professional staff at the California Institute of Technology. His research focuses on using advanced statistical methods including artificial intelligence and machine learning to extract information from very large multi-wavelength (hyper-spectral) data sets. He has primarily used this to study structure formation in the universe and the nature of dark matter and dark energy.
Education
Capak graduated from Smithers Secondary School in Smithers, British Columbia, Canada. He received his bachelor of science in physics and astronomy with honors from the University of British Columbia in 1999. He then earned a masters in astronomy in 2002, and a Ph.D. in astronomy in 2004 both from the University of Hawaii. In his Ph.D. thesis, he focused on measuring the growth of structure and history of star formation in the universe using several data sets included the GOODS survey.
Scientific Career
Dr. Capak is currently science lead of the SPHEREx science center at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Caltech and a leading member of the NASA Euclid Science Center at IPAC. He previously was a member of the Spitzer Science Center where he lead the Spitzer Enhanced Imaging Products pipeline team and the Spitzer Frontiers Field Initiative. Before joining IPAC, he was a postdoctoral fellow on the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) and a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.
Capak joined Caltech, in 2004, to work on the COSMOS project where he lead the multi-wavelength data processing and analysis effort. As part of this work he developed a novel way of estimating redshifts from photometry (photometric redshifts) that accounted for the signal strength of weak lensing, enabling the first 3 dimensional map of dark matter.
In 2010, Capak took over leadership of the COSMOS collaboration which he lead until 2018. The COSMOS data set helped to develop the concept behind several major experiments to measure the properties of dark matter and dark energy including the Dark UNiverse Explorer which was incorporated into the Euclid mission. Capak consulted [1] on the design of NASA’s Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (WFIRST). He was also a co-investigator on the team that developed NASA’s SPHEREx mission.
Capak’s work has been featured in the media numerous times including his work on Abell 520, the Baby Boom Galaxy. He also discovered the most distant known cluster of galaxies [2][3] and carried out the first large study of the interstellar medium in the distant universe.[4][5]
References
- ^ "Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report". 12 March 2015.
- ^ "NASA Telescopes Help Identify Most Distant Galaxy Cluster". JPL NASA. 11 Jan 2011.
- ^ "A massive protocluster of galaxies at a redshift of z ≈ 5.3". Nature. 12 Jan 2011.
- ^ "Ancient Carbon Haze Offers Clues to Galaxy Evolution". Space.com. 24 June 2015.
- ^ "Galaxies at redshifts 5 to 6 with systematically low dust content and high [C II] emission". Nature. 24 June 2015.