Ben Wandelt

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Ben Wandelt is an Associate Professor of Physics and of Astronomy at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is researching various areas in theoretical cosmology mainly dealing with the Cosmic Microwave Background.

Ben received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Imperial College in London. From 1997 to 1999 he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Theoretical Astrophysics Center in Copenhagen, Denmark. He also worked as a research associate at the Department of Physics at Princeton University from 1999 to 2001. In August 2001 Ben traveled westward to join the Department of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Among the awards and honors that Ben has received are:

• The Sofia Kovalevskaja Award, given by the Alexander von Humboldt foundation for outstanding work in research (declined due to University obligations).
• The Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award for outstanding research in his field.
• UIUC Center for Advanced Studies Beckman Fellow for 2004-2005.
• National Center for Supercomputing Applications Faculty Fellow for 2003-2004.

Among Ben's primary research interests are theoretical cosmology, structure formation, dark matter, large scale structure, the early universe, and the application of mathematical, statistical, and computational methods to theory and observations in cosmology.

Ben is one of the authors of HEALPix, software which allows for quick and accurate analysis of extremely-large full-sky data sets, notably the information gained from space probes about the CMB.