Halpern receives 2018 CASCA Beals Award

April 16, 2018

Congratulations to Dr. Mark Halpern, who will be receiving the 2018 Carlyle S. Beals Award from the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA). He will be presented the award during the annual CASCA meeting in Victoria, British Columbia from May 22 to 26.

The Carlyle S. Beals Award was established by CASCA in 1981 in recognition of the groundbreaking research of the late C.S. Beals. It recognizes a Canadian astronomer or an astronomer working in Canada for the outstanding achievement in research (either as a specific achievement or as a lifetime of research).

CASCA on Mark’s contributions:

Dr. Halpern is currently Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of British Columbia. He has made many fundamental contributions to cosmological instrumentation and data analysis, and his work has been essential for making the measurements underpinning the Standard Model of Cosmology that is now the accepted framework for our current understanding of the Universe. Over the course of his distinguished career, Dr. Halpern has been involved in a number of high-profile endeavours in the study of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). He made the first measurement of the dipole moment of the CMB at submillimeter wavelengths in the 1980s, he developed prototype bolometers for the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite experiment, and he was the only non-US member of the team that built the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). The WMAP team won the Gruber Prize in Cosmology in 2012 for determining the Universe’s vital statistics - age, geometry and origin. Dr. Halpern has been leading the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) which saw first light in Penticton, BC in September 2017. CHIME is set to make unprecedented measurements of Baryon Acoustic Oscillations in the distant Universe.

This portfolio of pioneering work in cosmology makes Dr. Halpern a most deserving recipient of CASCA’s Beals Award.

Mark was also recently chosen as one of the "Humans of the Year" by media company VICE/Motherboard.

Congratulations Mark!