Faculty awarded prestigious no-frills MacArthur grants
Adam Riess reflects on significance of being named a "genius" and daily life as a researcher
[Related: Read about Peter Pronovost's grant.]
Adam Reiss is the ninth member of Hopkins faculty to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, a $500,000, five-year grant given to "individuals selected for their creativity, originality and potential to make important future contributions."
Riess was the first author of a paper published in 1998 announcing the discovery of the dark energy, which is known to be driving the expansion of the universe in defiance of the forces of gravity.
News-Letter (N-L):?What do you intend to do with the MacArthur Fellows Grant?
Adam Riess (AR): I'm not really sure. There's one project I have in mind, which involves building a special set of filters for a telescope for a particular application.
N-L:?You're really involved with the Hubble Space telescope. What does that entail?
AR: I've worked with the [Hubble] Space Telescope Institute from the side of helping calibrate it and make it accessible to other astronomers.
In 2001 I made an important discovery with data from the archive of Hubble data. This provided data on the most distant supernovas yet observed. That observation alone helped confirm that the universe is expanding. Ever since, I've been doing studies with this data about the increasing rate of expansion in the universe.
N-L:?How did you decide on your area of research?
AR: I never decided to study dark energy - we just happened to discover it. What we wanted to study was the expansion rate of the universe and the age of the universe. By observing that the rate of expansion was accelerating, this implied the existence of dark energy.
N-L: After this discovery, what are your future research plans?
AR: I'm working in a number of different situations. I'm helping to design a new camera that will increase current optical power.
Adam Reiss is the ninth member of Hopkins faculty to receive the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship, a $500,000, five-year grant given to "individuals selected for their creativity, originality and potential to make important future contributions."
Riess was the first author of a paper published in 1998 announcing the discovery of the dark energy, which is known to be driving the expansion of the universe in defiance of the forces of gravity.
News-Letter (N-L):?What do you intend to do with the MacArthur Fellows Grant?
Adam Riess (AR): I'm not really sure. There's one project I have in mind, which involves building a special set of filters for a telescope for a particular application.
N-L:?You're really involved with the Hubble Space telescope. What does that entail?
AR: I've worked with the [Hubble] Space Telescope Institute from the side of helping calibrate it and make it accessible to other astronomers.
In 2001 I made an important discovery with data from the archive of Hubble data. This provided data on the most distant supernovas yet observed. That observation alone helped confirm that the universe is expanding. Ever since, I've been doing studies with this data about the increasing rate of expansion in the universe.
N-L:?How did you decide on your area of research?
AR: I never decided to study dark energy - we just happened to discover it. What we wanted to study was the expansion rate of the universe and the age of the universe. By observing that the rate of expansion was accelerating, this implied the existence of dark energy.
N-L: After this discovery, what are your future research plans?
AR: I'm working in a number of different situations. I'm helping to design a new camera that will increase current optical power.
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