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:
My collaborators and I have made a concerted effort to determine the nature of the progenitor stars, the explosion mechanisms, and the nucleosynthetic products of different types of supernovae. One of our group's major activities is to use supernovae as cosmological distance indicators. I am also interested in determining the physical properties of quasars and active galactic nuclei. Another major research area is the search for black holes in X-ray binary star systems. My group has developed a 0.8-meter robotic telescope at Lick Observatory (KAIT, the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope) that obtains data automatically, every clear night, while we sleep; see http://astron.berkeley.edu/~bait/kait.html.
Biography:
Alex Filippenko's research accomplishments, documented in about 500 published papers, have been recognized by several major prizes, and he is one of the world's most highly cited astronomers. He has won the top teaching awards at Berkeley and has been voted the "Best Professor" on campus five times. In 2006, he was selected as the Carnegie/CASE Professor of the Year among doctoral institutions. He has produced three astronomy video courses with The Teaching Company and coauthored an award-winning textbook. He is an avid tennis player and hiker, enjoys world travel, and is addicted to experiencing total solar eclipses (8 and counting).