Asantha R. Cooray

Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of California, Irvine
4186 Frederick Reines Hall
Irvine, CA 92617
acooray@uci.edu

Positions

Associate Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Irvine, 2007-
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy, University of California Irvine, 2005-2007
Visiting Research Faculty Associate, California Institute of Technology, 2005-
Sherman Fairchild Senior Research Fellow in Physics, California Institute of Technology (2001-2005)
Research Fellow, University of Chicago (2001)

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

BS in Physics, 1997
BS in Earth, Atmospheric & Planetary Sciences, 1997
BS in Applied Mathematics, 1997
Minor: Anthropology
MS (A joint Astrophysics and Planetary Science concentration), 1997
MS Thesis Title:Stellar Occultation Observations of Saturn's North-Polar Temperature Structure
Advisor:Prof. James L. Elliot & Prof. Bernard Burke

University of Chicago

MS in Astronomy & Astrophysics, Dec 1998
PhD in Astrophysics, June 2001
PhD Thesis Title: Applications of Halo Approach to Non-LInear Large Scale Structure Clustering
Advisor:Professor Wayne Hu

Awards

UCI Chancellor's Fellow 2007-2010
NSF Early Career Development (CAREER) Award 2007-2012
UCI Chancellor's Award for Excellence and Distinguished Fostering of Undergraduate Research 2007
UCI School of Physical Sciences' Award for Outstanding Contributions to Undergraduate Education 2007
2000 Sugarman Award For Excellence in Research, Enrico Fermi Institute, University of Chicago
McCormick Fellowship, U. of Chicago Physical Sciences Division (1997-2000)
Sigma Xi Grant-In-Aid of Research
Sigma Pi Sigma, Physics Honor Society
Sigma Xi, Science Honor Society

Research Group

Post-doctoral supervision:

Naoki Seto (2005-2007)
Alex Amblard (2006-). Currently Herschel Project Scientist
Paolo Serra (2007-).
Biswajit Pandey (starting 8/2009- ).

Students:

PhD completed:
Devdeep Sarkar (UCI 2009; Postdoc at U. of Michigan)
Chao Li (Caltech 2008; Goldman Sachs; co-supervisor with Kip Thorne and Yanbei Chen)
Tristan Smith (Caltech 2008; Berkeley Postdoc; Thesis Committee)
Michael Kesden (Caltech 2005; Caltech postdoc; research mentor)
Kris Sigurdson (Caltech 2005; UBC faculty; research mentor)

Current PhD:
Joseph Smidt
Sam Kim

Other:
Academic year 2005: 4 undergraduates, 1 graduate student (Daniel Tierney; MS Completed)
Acadermic year 2006: 7 undergraduates, 1 graduate student (Devdeep Sarkar)
Academic year 2007: 4 undergraduates, 2 graduate students (Devdeep Sarkar, Shahab Joudaki), 3 visiting students from Italy (Marcella Veneziani, Francesco De Bernardis, Davide Pietrobon)
Academic year 2008: 3 undergraduates, 4 graduate students (Sarkar, Joudaki, Sam Kim, Joseph Smidt)
Summer 2009 expected: 2 undergraduates, 3 graduate students, 6 visiting graduate students
See group details here.

Teaching

Spring 05, P53, Numerical methods in Physics
Fall 05, P20D, Space Science
Spring 06, P53 Numerical methods in Physics
Fall 06, P20D, Space Science
Spring 07, P53 Numerical methods in Physics
Spring 07, P150 Order of Magnitude Physics
Winter 08, P20D Space Science
Fall 08, Winter 09, Spring 09, P196/H196/P197 Senior Thesis Research Advisor

Freshmen Seminars:

Spring 05: What do we know about the Universe?
Fall 05: 100 Years After: How Einstein Changed the World
Spring 06: Universe From Aristotle to Einstein
Fall 06: Mysteries of the Universe
Winter 07: Pluto Controversy: 8, 9, or 12 Planets?
Spring 07: SETI: Life in the Universe
Fall 07: Mysteries of the Universe
(Number of freshmen students capped at 15; generally oversubscribed; voluntary teaching)

Research Funding

PI, NSF Astronomy Division CAREER Award (2007-2012)
PI, NASA Support for US-based Scientists in Herschel-SPIRE Instrument GTO Science Team (2007-2011)
Co-PI LANL-IGPP Support for Dark Energy theory (2009-2011)
US (NASA) PI, Herschel Thousand Degree Survey (2008-2011)

Educational Funding

PI, (for Graduate Student Education), Department of Education GAANN Program in Cosmology, Biophysics, and Nanotechnology at Department of Physics, UC Irvine, 2007-2010

Completed Funding

Co-I, NASA Astronomy and Physics Research and Analysis Support for Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment, CIBER (2007-2009)
PI, Space Telescope Science Institute Archival and Theoretical Research, 2007-2008
PI, Spitzer Science Center Archival Analysis - IR Background with Spitzer IRAC - 2007-2008
Co-PI, NSF Support for Conference on CMB Radiation (2006)
Co-PI, UCI Internal Support for First Light and Reionization Conference (2005)
Co-PI, UCI Internal Support for CMB Conference (2006)
PI, UCI Faculty Desktop Funding (for Student Computing Lab) (2005)

Professional Activities

[1] Science Editor, Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. An Institute of Physics (IoP, UK) and SISSA, Italy Journal.
[2] Theory Co-I, Experimental Probe of Inflationary Cosmology (EPIC) Mission (CMBpol mission for the Inflationary Gravitational Wave B-modes) and Co-I NASA Concept Study for CMBpol
[3] Theory/Data Analysis Co-I, Cosmic Infrared Background ExpeRiment (CIBER) - A Rocket-borne experiment to measure fluctuations in the near-IR background and the extragalactic background light; NASA APRA funded
[4] Associate, Herschel SPIRE Instrument Team's Science Consortium (SAG-1); Funded by NASA support for US participants in Herschel GTO programs
[5] NASA (US) PI of the Herschel-ATLAS survey; the widest area (600 sqr. degrees) in the Herschel Key Projects program
[6] Organizer: (a) Fundamental Physics With Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation March 23-25, 2006 at the Beckman Center, National Academies, Irvine, California (b) First Light and Reionization: Theoretical Study and Experimental Detection of First Sources May 18th-21st, 2005 at the Beckman Center, National Academies, Irvine, California (c) 2004 Theoretical Astrophysics in Southern California (TASC) Meeting on October 15th, 2004 at the University of California Irvine Campus. (d) 2003 KBO Workshop: Occultation Searches for Kuiper Belt Objects on September 1st, 2003 at the Monterey, CA (as part of the 2003 DPS meeting). (e) Evolution of galaxies through the neutral hydrogen window (Arecibo HI conference), Arecibo Observatory, Puerto Rico (February 1-3, 2008). (f) Cosmology with the cosmic microwave background, IUCAA, Pune India (summer school and workshop; July 21-August 30, 2008).

Publications & Presentations

Over 135 refereed publications since 1999 in ApJ, ApJ Letters, PRD, PRL, MNRAS, JCAP, among others. H-index: 29, citations 3000+ (May 1st, 2009). For listings, SPIRES-HEP Listing || SPIRES-HEP citation summary and h-index and associated statistics || NASA ADS ||
Also see, Presentations available online.


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