Oliver Zahn
NationalityGerman and American
Alma materLudwig Maximilian University of Munich (Diploma in Physics, 2003)
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and Heidelberg University (Ph.D., 2007)
Occupation
  • Scientist
    Physics
    Data Scientist
Websitewww.climaxfoods.com

Oliver Zahn is US/German theoretical astrophysicist, data scientist, and entrepreneur, best known for developing algorithms for astrophysical data analysis and widely cited discoveries of phenomena in the history of the Universe. He is also known for his more recent work as founder and CEO of Climax Foods, a California-based biotechnology company modeling dairy and other animal products directly from plant ingredients. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Zahn directed UC Berkeley's Center for Cosmological Physics alongside George Smoot and Saul Perlmutter and was Head of Data Science at Google[1]

Early life and education

Zahn was born in Munich and studied physics and philosophy at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, doing his Diploma thesis in theoretical astrophysics jointly at Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics and New York University, graduating summa cum laude. He went on to do his dissertation work in cosmology at Harvard University, before winning the inaugural prize fellowship at UC Berkeley's Center for Cosmological Physics,[2] funded directly by the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.[3]

Career

Industry career

In 2019, Oliver founded Climax Foods to replace animal foods with dairy and meat directly produced from plants, circumventing the animals' complex metabolisms and thereby reducing greenhouse gases and water use caused by animal agriculture. Climax aims to outcompete animal products by offering zero-compromise alternatives that are purely plant-based, yet indistinguishable in terms of taste and texture, and better than their animal-based competitors in terms of nutrition and price.[4][5][6]

Academic career

Zahn has worked on a broad range of topics in theoretical, computational, and observational astrophysics and cosmology. Working with multiple multi-national collaborations, he has co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed journal articles with more than 14,000 citations and a h-index of 68.[7]

As an undergraduate at Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, Zahn studied the early Universe and constrained deviations from the laws of gravity and electro-magnetism during the Big Bang.[8]

While a doctoral student at Harvard University, Zahn and co-authors Smith and Dore detected, for the first time, gravitational lensing in the cosmic microwave background.[9] The finding has since been confirmed by teams analyzing data from the Planck, Polarbear, and SPT telescopes [10][11][12]

In a separate series of papers [13][14][15] Zahn introduced statistical measures to use redshifted 21 cm radiation to study otherwise inaccessible periods of the Universe's structure formation. He invented a novel simulation framework to study galaxy formation in the cosmic web, yielding orders of magnitude performance gains compared to previous ray tracing frameworks, enabling exploration of much larger parameter spaces.

While leading analyses for the University of Chicago and University of California, Berkeley, based South Pole Telescope collaboration, Zahn and his team showed that the first galaxies formed more explosively than previously thought.[16][17]

References

  1. ↑ "How one man's philosophy of data and food science could help save the planet". 10 November 2020.
  2. ↑ "Oliver Zahn | BCCP".
  3. ↑ "12.04.2007 - Nobelist Smoot launches new cosmology center". www.berkeley.edu. Retrieved 2021-07-11.
  4. ↑ "Climax Foods raises $7.5m: 'We want to replace animals as inefficient factories for converting plants into meat and dairy'". foodnavigator-usa.com.
  5. ↑ "How one man's philosophy of data and food science could help save the planet". Fix. November 10, 2020.
  6. ↑ "Climax Foods Raises $7.5M for its Machine Learning Approach to Plant-Based Cheese". The Spoon. September 1, 2020.
  7. ↑ "Oliver Zahn". scholar.google.com.
  8. ↑ Zahn, Oliver; Zaldarriaga, Matias (2003-03-18). "Probing the Friedmann equation during recombination with future cosmic microwave background experiments". Physical Review D. 67 (6): 063002. arXiv:astro-ph/0212360. Bibcode:2003PhRvD..67f3002Z. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.67.063002. S2CID 118750168.
  9. ↑ Smith, Kendrick M.; Zahn, Oliver; Doré, Olivier (2007-08-08). "Detection of gravitational lensing in the cosmic microwave background". Physical Review D. 76 (4): 043510. arXiv:0705.3980. Bibcode:2007PhRvD..76d3510S. doi:10.1103/PhysRevD.76.043510. ISSN 1550-7998. S2CID 119653392.
  10. ↑ van Engelen, A.; Keisler, R.; Zahn, O.; Aird, K. A.; Benson, B. A.; Bleem, L. E.; Carlstrom, J. E.; Chang, C. L.; Cho, H. M.; Crawford, T. M.; Crites, A. T. (2012-09-10). "A Measurement of Gravitational Lensing of the Microwave Background Using South Pole Telescope Data". The Astrophysical Journal. 756 (2): 142. arXiv:1202.0546. Bibcode:2012ApJ...756..142V. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/756/2/142. ISSN 0004-637X. S2CID 39214417.
  11. ↑ Ade, P. A. R.; Akiba, Y.; Anthony, A. E.; Arnold, K.; Atlas, M.; Barron, D.; Boettger, D.; Borrill, J.; Chapman, S.; Chinone, Y.; Dobbs, M. (2014-07-09). "Measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background Polarization Lensing Power Spectrum with the POLARBEAR Experiment". Physical Review Letters. 113 (2): 021301. arXiv:1312.6646. Bibcode:2014PhRvL.113b1301A. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.113.021301. ISSN 0031-9007. PMID 25062161. S2CID 25628512.
  12. ↑ Planck Collaboration; Aghanim, N.; Akrami, Y.; Ashdown, M.; Aumont, J.; Baccigalupi, C.; Ballardini, M.; Banday, A. J.; Barreiro, R. B.; Bartolo, N.; Basak, S. (2020). "Planck 2018 results: VIII. Gravitational lensing". Astronomy & Astrophysics. 641: A8. arXiv:1807.06210. Bibcode:2020A&A...641A...8P. doi:10.1051/0004-6361/201833886. ISSN 0004-6361. S2CID 119328305.
  13. ↑ Zahn, Oliver; Lidz, Adam; McQuinn, Matthew; Dutta, Suvendra; Hernquist, Lars; Zaldarriaga, Matias; Furlanetto, Steven R. (2007). "Simulations and Analytic Calculations of Bubble Growth during Hydrogen Reionization". The Astrophysical Journal. 654 (1): 12–26. arXiv:astro-ph/0604177. Bibcode:2007ApJ...654...12Z. doi:10.1086/509597. S2CID 14636746.
  14. ↑ McQuinn, Matthew; Zahn, Oliver; Zaldarriaga, Matias; Hernquist, Lars; Furlanetto, Steven R. (2006). "Cosmological Parameter Estimation Using 21 cm Radiation from the Epoch of Reionization". The Astrophysical Journal. 653 (2): 815–834. arXiv:astro-ph/0512263. Bibcode:2006ApJ...653..815M. doi:10.1086/505167. S2CID 1823028.
  15. ↑ Zahn, Oliver; Mesinger, Andrei; McQuinn, Matthew; Trac, Hy; Cen, Renyue; Hernquist, Lars E. (2011). "Comparison of reionization models: Radiative transfer simulations and approximate, seminumeric models". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 414 (1): 727–738. arXiv:1003.3455. Bibcode:2011MNRAS.414..727Z. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2966.2011.18439.x. S2CID 118708351.
  16. ↑ Zahn, O.; Reichardt, C. L.; Shaw, L.; Lidz, A.; Aird, K. A.; Benson, B. A.; Bleem, L. E.; Carlstrom, J. E.; Chang, C. L.; Cho, H. M.; Crawford, T. M. (2012-09-01). "Cosmic Microwave Background Constraints on the Duration and Timing of Reionization from the South Pole Telescope". The Astrophysical Journal. 756 (1): 65. arXiv:1111.6386. Bibcode:2012ApJ...756...65Z. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/756/1/65. ISSN 0004-637X. S2CID 118469424.
  17. ↑ "Explosion of Galaxy Formation Lit Up Early Universe". today.lbl.gov.
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