Alexei Filippenko

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Alexei Vladimir Filippenko

Born	July 25, 1958 (1958-07-25) (age 49) Oakland, California
Fields	Astrophysics
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley
Alma mater	B.A. University of California, Santa Barbara, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology
Known for	Type Ia Supernova Studies
Notable awards	Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy, Guggenheim Fellowship, and US Professor of the Year Award^[1]

Alexei Vladimir Filippenko born July 25, 1958 in Oakland, CA is a professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. Filippenko received his B.A. in physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1979 and his Ph.D. in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 1984. His research focuses on supernovae and active galaxies at optical, ultraviolet, and near-infrared wavelengths.

Filippenko was a member of both of the teams (first the Supernova Cosmology Project, then the High-z Supernova Search Team) that used observations of extragalactic supernovae to discover the accelerating universe. This universal acceleration implies the existence of dark energy and was voted the top science breakthrough of 1998 by Science magazine.^[2]

Filippenko developed and runs the Katzman Automatic Imaging Telescope (KAIT), a fully robotic telescope which conducts the Lick Observatory Supernova Search (LOSS), the most successful nearby supernova search. He is also a member of the Nuker Team^[3] which uses the Hubble space telescope to examine supermassive black holes and determined the relationship between a galaxy's central black hole's mass and velocity dispersion.^[4] He is the most cited astronomer over the last ten years (1996 - 2006).^[5]

Filippenko was awarded the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy in 1992 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2000. In addition to recognition for his scholarship, he has received numerous honors for his undergraduate teaching. These latter honors largely derive from the popularity of his introductory astronomy course intended for humanities and social science majors. In 2006, Filippenko was awarded the US Professor of the Year Award, sponsored by The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and administered by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE).^[1]