Peter Lawrence Capak
Alma materUniversity of Hawaii at Manoa
University of British Columbia
Known forCosmology, Structure Formation, Dark Matter, Dark Energy Galaxy Evolution
Scientific career
FieldsAstronomy, Machine Learning, Space Sciences
InstitutionsFacebook Reality Labs
California Institute of Technology
Cosmic DAWN Center
Websitepetercapak.com

Peter Lawrence Capak is currently the Architect of Perception Systems at the Oculus division of Facebook.[1] His current focus is developing machine perception technologies, sensors, displays, and compute architectures for the next generation of augmented (AR), mixed (MR) and virtual reality (VR) systems. His research has focused on using physical modeling and advanced statistical methods including artificial intelligence and machine learning to extract information from very large multi-wavelength (hyper-spectral) data sets. He has primarily used this to study structure formation in the universe, cosmology, and the nature of dark matter[2] and dark energy.

Early life and education

Capak grew up in a rural area near Smithers, British Columbia, Canada, where he graduated from Smithers Secondary School. He received his bachelor of science in physics and astronomy with honors from the University of British Columbia in 1999.[3] He then earned a masters in astronomy in 2002, and a Ph.D. in astronomy in 2004 both from the University of Hawaii.[4] In his Ph.D. thesis, he focused on measuring the growth of structure and history of star formation in the universe using several data sets including the GOODS survey.

Scientific career

Capak is currently the Architect of Perception Systems at the Oculus division of Facebook. Until 2020 he was a senior research scientist and lead of the SPHEREx[5][6] science center at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC), Caltech and a member of the NASA Euclid Science Center at IPAC. He previously was a member of the Spitzer Science Center where he led the Spitzer Enhanced Imaging Products pipeline team and the Spitzer Frontiers Field Initiative.[7] He was also a principal investigator on the Spitzer Large Area Survey with Hyper-Suprime-Cam (SPLASH) project.[8] Before joining IPAC, he was a postdoctoral fellow on the Cosmic Evolution Survey (COSMOS) and a graduate student at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Capak joined Caltech, in 2004, to work on the COSMOS project where he led the multi-wavelength data processing and analysis effort.[9][10] As part of this work he developed a way of estimating redshifts from photometry (photometric redshifts) that accounted for the signal strength of weak lensing, enabling the first 3-dimensional map of dark matter. He subsequently led the development of new technique based on manifold learning that significantly reduced the number of observations required to calibrate photometric redshifts for dark energy measurements.[11][12] This made it practical to carry out the calibration observations in a reasonable amount of time on the Keck and VLT telescopes with the C3R2 survey.[13][14] Capak has also worked on improving galaxy modeling techniques using more advanced statistical methods and machine learning[15][16][17] including leading the development of the fitting pipeline for the SPHEREx mission.[18]

In 2010, Capak took over leadership of the COSMOS collaboration which he led until 2018. The COSMOS data set helped to develop the concept behind several experiments to measure the properties of dark matter and dark energy including the Dark Universe Explorer (DUNE),[19] which was incorporated into the Euclid mission. Capak consulted[20] on the design of NASA's Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope (later renamed the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope). He was also a co-investigator on the team that developed NASA's SPHEREx mission.

Capak's work has been featured in the media including his work on Abell 520, the Baby Boom Galaxy. He also discovered the most distant known cluster of galaxies[21][22] and carried out the first large study of the interstellar medium in the distant universe.[23][24] In 2017-2019, he was identified as one of the top 1% of cited researchers in space sciences.[25][26][27] Since 2017, Capak has been an associate of the Cosmic Dawn Center (DAWN) [28] in Copenhagen, Denmark, a center focused on high-z research.

References

  1. ↑ "Dr. Peter L. Capak". petercapak.com. Retrieved 2020-04-23.
  2. ↑ "Big Unknowns: what is dark matter? – Science Weekly podcast". The Guardian. 22 Nov 2016.
  3. ↑ "PHYSICS 449/ ASTR 449 THESIS". Physics Astronomy, University of British Columbia. Retrieved 7 Aug 2019.
  4. ↑ "Alumni (alphabetical listing)". Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. Retrieved 7 Aug 2019.
  5. ↑ "SPHEREx Science Team". SPHEREx. Retrieved 7 Aug 2019.
  6. ↑ "IPAC Organization". IPAC. Retrieved 8 Aug 2019.
  7. ↑ "The Frontier Fields: where primordial galaxies lurk". Astronomy Now. 29 Sep 2016.
  8. ↑ "Spitzer's SPLASH Project Dives Deep for Galaxies". JPL NASA. 9 Sep 2014.
  9. ↑ "Dark matter maps reveal cosmic scaffolding" (PDF). Hubble Space Telescope. 12 Nov 2006.
  10. ↑ "First 3D map of the Universe's Dark Matter scaffolding". Hubble Space Telescope. 7 Jan 2007.
  11. ↑ Masters, Daniel; Capak, Peter; Stern, Daniel; Ilbert, Olivier; Salvato, Mara; Schmidt, Samuel; Longo, Giuseppe; Rhodes, Jason; Paltani, Stephane; Mobasher, Bahram; Hoekstra, Henk; Hildebrandt, Hendrik; Coupon, Jean; Steinhardt, Charles; Speagle, Josh; Faisst, Andreas; Kalinich, Adam; Brodwin, Mark; Brescia, Massimo; Cavuoti, Stefano (28 Oct 2015). "Mapping the Galaxy Color-Redshift Relation: Optimal Photometric Redshift Calibration Strategies for Cosmology Surveys". The Astrophysical Journal. 813 (1): 53. arXiv:1509.03318. Bibcode:2015ApJ...813...53M. doi:10.1088/0004-637X/813/1/53. hdl:1721.1/100755. S2CID 6200986.
  12. ↑ Hemmati, Shoubaneh; Capak, Peter; Masters, Daniel; Davidzon, Iary; Dorè, Olivier; Kruk, Jeffrey; Mobasher, Bahram; Rhodes, Jason; Scolnic, Daniel; Stern, Daniel (2019). "Photometric Redshift Calibration Requirements for WFIRST Weak Lensing Cosmology: Predictions from CANDELS". The Astrophysical Journal. 877 (2): 117. arXiv:1808.10458. Bibcode:2019ApJ...877..117H. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ab1be5. S2CID 119040241.
  13. ↑ "The C3R2 Survey: Mapping the Galaxy Color-Redshift Relation for Weak Lensing Cosmology". Retrieved 12 Aug 2019.
  14. ↑ Masters, Daniel; Stern, Daniel; Cohen, Judith; Capak, Peter; Rhodes, Jason; Castander, Francisco; Paltani, Stephane (2017). "The Complete Calibration of the Color-Redshift Relation (C3R2) Survey: Survey Overview and Data Release 1". The Astrophysical Journal. 841 (2): 111. arXiv:1704.06665. Bibcode:2017ApJ...841..111M. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/aa6f08. S2CID 12643344.
  15. ↑ Speagle, Joshua S.; Capak, Peter L.; Eisenstein, Daniel J.; Masters, Daniel C.; Steinhardt, Charles L. (2016). "Exploring Photometric Redshifts as an Optimization Problem: An Ensemble MCMC and Simulated Annealing-Driven Template-Fitting Approach". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 461 (4): 3432–3442. arXiv:1508.02484. doi:10.1093/mnras/stw1503.
  16. ↑ Hemmati, Shoubaneh; Capak, Peter; Pourrahmani, Milad; Nayyeri, Hooshang; Stern, Daniel; Mobasher, Bahram; Darvish, Behnam; Davidzon, Iary; Ilbert, Olivier; Masters, Daniel; Shahidi, Abtin (2019). "Bringing manifold learning and dimensionality reduction to SED fitters". The Astrophysical Journal. 881 (1): L14. arXiv:1905.10379. Bibcode:2019ApJ...881L..14H. doi:10.3847/2041-8213/ab3418. S2CID 166228692.
  17. ↑ Davidzon, I.; Laigle, C.; Capak, P. L.; Ilbert, O.; Masters, D. C.; Hemmati, S.; Apostolakos, N.; Coupon, J.; de la Torre, S.; Devriendt, J.; Dubois, Y.; Kashino, D.; Paltani, S.; Pichon, C. (2019). "Horizon-AGN virtual observatory - 2: Template-free estimates of galaxy properties from colours". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 489 (4): 4817. arXiv:1905.13233. Bibcode:2019MNRAS.489.4817D. doi:10.1093/mnras/stz2486.
  18. ↑ Stickley, Nathaniel R.; Capak, Peter; Masters, Daniel; De Putter, Roland; Doré, Olivier; Bock, Jamie (2016). "An Empirical Approach to Cosmological Galaxy Survey Simulation: Application to SPHEREx Low-Resolution Spectroscopy". arXiv:1606.06374 [astro-ph.IM].
  19. ↑ Refregier, A.; the DUNE collaboration (2009). "The Dark UNiverse Explorer (DUNE): Proposal to ESA's Cosmic Vision". Experimental Astronomy. 23 (1): 17–37. arXiv:0802.2522. Bibcode:2009ExA....23...17R. doi:10.1007/s10686-008-9106-9. S2CID 14070433.
  20. ↑ Spergel, D.; Gehrels, N.; Baltay, C.; Bennett, D.; Breckinridge, J.; Donahue, M.; Dressler, A.; Gaudi, B. S.; Greene, T.; Guyon, O.; Hirata, C.; Kalirai, J.; Kasdin, N. J.; Macintosh, B.; Moos, W.; Perlmutter, S.; Postman, M.; Rauscher, B.; Rhodes, J.; Wang, Y.; Weinberg, D.; Benford, D.; Hudson, M.; Jeong, W. -S.; Mellier, Y.; Traub, W.; Yamada, T.; Capak, P.; Colbert, J.; Masters, D.; et al. (12 March 2015). "Wide-Field InfrarRed Survey Telescope-Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets WFIRST-AFTA 2015 Report". arXiv:1503.03757 [astro-ph.IM].
  21. ↑ Clavin, Whitney (11 Jan 2011). "NASA Telescopes Help Identify Most Distant Galaxy Cluster". JPL NASA.
  22. ↑ Capak, P. L.; Riechers, D.; Scoville, N. Z.; Carilli, C.; Cox, P.; Neri, R.; Robertson, B.; Salvato, M.; Schinnerer, E.; Yan, L.; Wilson, G. W.; Yun, M.; Civano, F.; Elvis, M.; Karim, A.; Mobasher, B.; Staguhn, J. G. (12 Jan 2011). "A massive protocluster of galaxies at a redshift of z ≈ 5.3". Nature. 470 (7333): 233–5. arXiv:1101.3586. Bibcode:2011Natur.470..233C. doi:10.1038/nature09681. PMID 21228776. S2CID 205223398.
  23. ↑ Choi, Charles (24 June 2015). "Ancient Carbon Haze Offers Clues to Galaxy Evolution". Space.com.
  24. ↑ Capak, P. L.; Carilli, C.; Jones, G.; Casey, C. M.; Riechers, D.; Sheth, K.; Carollo, C. M.; Ilbert, O.; Karim, A.; Lefevre, O.; Lilly, S.; Scoville, N.; Smolcic, V.; Yan, L. (24 June 2015). "Galaxies at redshifts 5 to 6 with systematically low dust content and high [C II] emission". Nature. 522 (7557): 455–458. arXiv:1503.07596. Bibcode:2015Natur.522..455C. doi:10.1038/nature14500. PMID 26108853. S2CID 56110132.
  25. ↑ "2017 Highly Cited Researchers". Clarivate Analytics. Archived from the original on 14 September 2018. Retrieved 9 Aug 2019.
  26. ↑ "Highly Cited Researchers 2018". Web of Science Group. Archived from the original on 20 February 2019. Retrieved 9 Aug 2019.
  27. ↑ "Highly Cited Researchers". publons.com. Retrieved 2020-04-23.
  28. ↑ "Cosmic Dawn Center Staff and Students". Cosmic Dawn Center. 25 March 2019. Retrieved 30 Jan 2020.
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