Renée Hložek facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Renée Hložek
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Renée Hložek in Toronto, October 2019
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| Born | 15 November 1983 |
| Alma mater | University of Cape Town University of Oxford |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | University of Toronto Princeton University |
| Thesis | Probing the early universe and dark energy with multi-epoch cosmological data |
| Doctoral advisor | Jo Dunkley |
Renée Hložek (born 15 November 1983) is a famous South African cosmologist. She is a professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Toronto. She is also an Azrieli Global Scholar with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
Professor Hložek studies big questions about our universe. She looks at the cosmic microwave background, which is like an echo from the early universe. She also studies Type Ia supernova (exploding stars) and baryon acoustic oscillations, which help us understand how the universe grew. She has received important awards, including a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2020 and the Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada.
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Early Life and Education
Renée Hložek started her studies in mathematics. She went to the University of Pretoria and the University of Cape Town in South Africa. She finished her first degree in 2008. During this time, she began to study dark energy, a mysterious force that makes the universe expand faster.
She then moved to the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. She was a Rhodes Scholar, which is a special scholarship for talented students. She earned her PhD in 2011. Her research looked at the early universe and dark energy. She used data from powerful telescopes like the Atacama Cosmology Telescope and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Her PhD advisor was Jo Dunkley. While at Oxford, she even appeared on a podcast called "Pub Astronomy" and "365 Days of Astronomy."
Research and Career Highlights
After getting her PhD, Renée Hložek went to Princeton University in the United States. There, she worked as a researcher. She helped prepare for new studies using the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, which can detect special signals from space. In 2012, she became a Spitzer-Cotsen Fellow at Princeton.
While at Princeton, she was involved in many cool projects. She taught science in prisons and helped create the Hope-Princeton exchange. This program encouraged young Black women to join astronomy departments at Princeton. She also took part in "The Story Collider," where scientists share personal stories about science. In 2013, she joined the "Science Train" project. For this, she rode the New York City Subway to talk to people about astronomy!
Studying the Universe
In 2016, Professor Hložek joined the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics in Canada. She continues her work with the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. She also uses data from other space missions like Planck and Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, as well as ground-based telescopes like BICEP and Keck Array.
She also works to find and classify fast radio signals from space using the Algonquin 46m radio telescope. She has collaborated with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. In 2017, she participated in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research's "Untangling the Cosmos" event. In 2019, she was named a CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar. She also received a Sloan Research Fellowship in 2020 and the Rutherford Memorial Medal in 2024. She is a spokesperson for the Vera C. Rubin Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC).
Sharing Science with the World
Renée Hložek is also well-known for sharing science with the public. She was named a TED Fellow in 2012 and a Senior Fellow in 2014. Her TEDed video called "The death of the universe" has been watched over 1.1 million times! She has given talks at several TED events, including the 2014 TED conference in Vancouver. She is very active in encouraging more girls and women to study science.
See also
In Spanish: Renée Hložek para niños
