Matt Dobbs
Matt Dobbs is Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Physics and associate member of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at McGill University (Canada) and is a Senior Fellow in the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research CIfAR Gravity and the Extreme Universe Program. Prof. Dobbs earned a Ph.D. (2002) in experimental Particle Physics from the University of Victoria (Canada), was awarded the inaugural Owen Chamberlain Fellowship at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory (USA) in 2002, and earned a Sloan Fellowship in 2009. He was named Canada Research Chair (T2) in Astro-particle Physics for two terms from 2006-2015. In 2014 he was awarded the inaugural Dunlap Award for Innovation in Astronomical Research Tools and the Canadian Association of Physicists Herzberg Medal.
Mailing Address:
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building
3600 Rue University
Montréal, Québec, Canada H3A 2T8
Office Telephone: (514) 398-6500 (do not leave messages - send them by email instead)
Email: matt.dobbs@mcgill.ca
For Prospective Students
Blog for the deployment of the South Pole Telescope Jan/Feb 2007
Old links: | MyPhotoGallery | My Library (password needed) | Original Photo Gallery (password needed) |
Calendar showing my schedule (not all of my appointments listed here, but if you're trying to arrange a meeting, this is a good starting point).
If you use Google calendar, you can superimpose my calendar on yours by clicking here:
Research
The aim of Prof. Dobbs' research is to improve our understanding of the fundamental constituents of the universe – including its origin, history, and fate – providing new insight into the early universe, where the laws of particle physics and cosmology intersect. His research group at McGill specializes in the design, construction, and operation of novel instrumentation and experiments to explore the early universe. Prof. Dobbs has journeyed to the ends of the earth to deploy his instruments in the best observing conditions, including the geographic South Pole and aboard stratospheric balloons.
The CMB polarization is one of the few tools we know of to probe physics at inflationary energy scales, where grand unified theories may manifest themselves. At McGill, we heavily involved with the South Pole Telescope polarimeter, the NASA balloon-borne experiment EBEX, and POLARBEAR. These experiments may unveil the signature of inflationary gravity waves using the CMB polarization.
Another fundamental unknown is the nature of Dark Energy, which presently accounts for about 70% of the energy density in the universe. I am involved with two experiments, APEX-SZ and the South Pole Telescope, which will use a subtle distortion of the CMB from Galaxy Clusters called the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect to measure the expansion history of the universe and gain new information about Dark Energy.
The Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) is an exciting new project for mapping the 21cm signature from z=1-2.5 and searching for Fast Radio Bursts.