Speaker: Dr. Nicholas Galitzki ( UCSD)
Topic: Cosmic Microwave Background at the Simons Observatory
Dr. Nicholas Galitzki began his astronomy career at the California Institute of Technology where he earned his B.S. in astrophysics in 2008. While at Caltech he was involved in two research projects, one with a lunar seismometer developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratories and another working with a weather monitoring station for the proposed Caltech Cornell Atacama Telescope. After Caltech, Nicholas took a break for a couple years which included a stint as a line cook at an Italian restaurant in Boulder, CO and time as a K through 9 teacher in Seoul, South Korea. After these adventures he continued his education at the University of Pennsylvania where he earned his doctorate in astrophysics in 2016. While at UPenn, his research concentrated on the development and launch of a balloon borne telescope from Antarctica and the subsequent analysis of the data from the mission that has revealed new details about the star formation process in our Milky Way. He has now joined the cosmology group at UC, San Diego on a project that aims to build the next generation of telescopes that will examine in unprecedented detail the polarized signal from the cosmic microwave background.