Alexei V. Filippenko
Professor of Astronomy
PhD 1984 (California Institute of Technology)
Campus address and phone:
439 Campbell Hall
(510) 642-1813
Email:
Website:
http://astro.berkeley.edu/~alex/
Specialty areas:
Supernovae, active galaxies, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and the
expansion of the Universe
Research projects:
Alex Filippenko and his collaborators have made a concerted effort to determine the nature of the progenitor stars and the explosion mechanisms of different types of supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. One of his major activities is to use supernovae as cosmological distance indicators; he was a member of both teams that discovered (in 1998) the accelerating expansion of the Universe, driven by "dark energy." He is also interested in determining the physical properties of quasars and active galaxies, and he searches for black holes in both X-ray binary stars and nearby galactic nuclei. His group has developed a 0.76-meter robotic telescope at Lick Observatory (KAIT, the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope), which in the past decade has been the world's most successful search engine for relatively nearby supernovae; see http://astro.berkeley.edu/~bait/kait.html.
Biography:
Alex Filippenko is the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences. His research accomplishments, documented in more than 600 published papers, have been recognized by several major prizes, and he is one of the world's most highly cited astronomers. In 2009 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences. He has won the top teaching awards at UC Berkeley and has been voted the "Best Professor" on campus six times. In 2006, he was selected as the Carnegie/CASE National Professor of the Year among doctoral institutions. He has produced four astronomy video courses with The Teaching Company and coauthored an award-winning textbook. An avid tennis player and hiker, he enjoys world travel and is addicted to experiencing total solar eclipses (10, and counting).