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Dr Christopher Carilli

Federation Fellowship winner 2008.

Project : Exploring the last frontier: Cosmic reionization and the first galaxies.

Current institution : National Radio Astronomy Observatory (US).

Host institution : CSIRO - Australia Telescope National Facility.

Primary research field : Astronomical sciences.

Dr Carilli is Director of the North American Atamaca Large Millimetre Array Science Centre at the US National Radio Astronomy Observatory and a world leading expert in radio astronomy. His expertise covers extragalactic astronomy, quasi-stellar object absorption lines, clusters of galaxies and (sub)millimetre dust and molecular emissions from high red shift sources.

Dr Carilli intends that his research program will position Australia as a leader in the development of a new radioscope, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA). He plans to take advantage of the uniquely radio quiet environment of Western Australia to achieve unprecedented measurements of the ‘first light fossils' in the Universe. This could assist in discovering the sources of the first new light in the Universe and how these sources act to reionize the neutral intergalactic medium.

Dr Carilli obtained his PhD in physics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US . He has been awarded several fellowships, including an Alexander von Humboldt Visiting Research Fellowship, a Centre Research Fellowship at the Harvard Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, and a Greenlaw Fellowship at MIT.

Dr Carilli is a member of the SKA International Science Group, which he chaired during 2002-04 and he serves on several astronomical committees, including the International Astronomical Union's Division 10 Subcommittee on Radio Astronomy and Cosmology. In 2005, he jointly received the Max-Planck Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Max Planck Society.