Andrew Chael
Andrew Chael | |
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Born | Andrew Alan Chael January 1991 |
Education | |
Known for | |
Scientific career | |
Fields | |
Thesis | Simulating and Imaging Supermassive Black Hole Accretion Flows |
Website | achael |
Andrew Alan Chael is an American astrophysicist using algorithms to infer image properties of the near-horizon regions, or "shadows," of supermassive black holes by comparison with observational data. He is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which in April 2019 captured the first image of a black hole[1][2] in the giant elliptical galaxy M87. Chael also uses general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations such as KORAL to infer characteristics of heretofore unobserved black hole shadows.[3]
Early life and education[]
Andrew Chael was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1991.
He graduated Harvard University with a Ph.D. in physics in 2019,[4] with his dissertation on "Simulating and Imaging Supermassive Black Hole Accretion Flows" related to his work on the Event Horizon Telescope.
Research and career[]
Chael developed the fast and versatile eht-im (EHT Imaging) software,[5] which can generate images from synthetic data in seconds using a cpu, e.g., on a laptop. After the EHT used four independent teams to blindly reconstruct M87 data using regularized maximum likelihood and CLEAN algorithms,[6] Chael's EHT Imaging Pipeline [7] was applied to synthetic data compared to the real data to extract M87 parameters such as ring size and asymmetry from a space of 37,500 parameter combinations. Other pipelines used by EHT for M87 include DIFMAP (1,008 parameter combinations explored) and SMILI (10,800 parameter combinations explored).[6]
Chael is currently a NASA Einstein Fellow at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Sciences,[8] and Princeton Gravity Initiative.[9]
He is highly decorated within the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, being the only member to win both the Outstanding PhD Thesis and Early Career Awards.[10]
Personal life[]
Chael is an openly gay man.[11]
References[]
- ^ The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, "First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole" The Astrophysical Journal Letters 875:L1 (2019)
- ^ Lee Billings. "At Last, a Black Hole's Image Revealed".
- ^ Chael, Andrew; Rowan, Michael; Narayan, Ramesh; Johnson, Michael; Sironi, Lorenzo (2018). "The role of electron heating physics in images and variability of the Galactic Centre black hole Sagittarius A*". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 478 (4): 5209–5229. arXiv:1804.06416. doi:10.1093/mnras/sty1261. S2CID 55860213.
- ^ "Harvard PhD Theses in Physics, 2001-2020".
- ^ "Imaging". Andrew Chael GitHub. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
- ^ a b The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, "First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV. Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole" The Astrophysical Journal Letters 875:L4 52pp (2019)
- ^ "Here's What Scientists Think Their First Picture of a Black Hole Might Look Like". Astronomy. April 3, 2020. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
- ^ "Andrew Chael". Princeton Center for Theoretical Sciences. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
- ^ "Andrew Chael". Princeton Gravity Initiative. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
- ^ "Awards by EHT". Event Horizon Telescope. August 19, 2020. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
- ^ Elfrink, Tim (April 12, 2019). "Trolls hijacked a scientist's image to attack Katie Bouman. They picked the wrong astrophysicist". The Washington Post. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
External links[]
Scholia has a profile for Andrew Chael (Q59549879). |
- [1], WIRED, July 18, 2019
- Living people
- 1991 births
- American computer scientists
- Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
- Carleton College alumni
- Jewish American scientists
- 21st-century American scientists
- 21st-century American Jews