2014 Medal Winners | francais

PRESS RELEASE / FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The 2014 CAP Herzberg Medal

is awarded to

Matt Dobbs

"It’s an honour to receive the Herzberg medal, a humbling recognition of our small contributions to the development and use of new instruments to better understand our cosmos. Our team’s accomplishments are mostly due to the tireless efforts of the students, postdocs, engineers and collaborators I have been lucky enough to work with- they inspire me!" winner quote

The Canadian Association of Physicists (CAP) is pleased to announce that the 2014 CAP Herzberg Medal is awarded to Matt Dobbs, McGill University, in recognition of for his leadership in project design, detector/readout development and data analysis which underpins a new generation of cosmology telescopes of unprecedented reach and precision.". announcement

Matt Dobbs has established a world-leading reputation for developing novel instrumentation that has made possible a new generation of millimeter wavelength telescopes. He has used this technology to make some of the most important recent measurements in the field of observational cosmology. His contributions span the spectrum of his field: he is acknowledged across the mm/sub-mm bolometer community as one of the few world experts in next generation TES (Transition Edge Sensors) detector readouts; he has led the Canadian contributions to several high profile international projects, including the South Pole Telescope and the EBEX Stratospheric balloon-borne telescope; his research group has led the analysis and publication of one of the most important results in cosmology over the last several years, the catalog and cosmological implication of the first galaxy cluster catalog using the Sunyaev Zeldovich effect; and he has developed a research group that mentors an exceptional number of highly sought after trainees in both physics and engineering. Dobbs' technology development is always forward looking. He is presently involved with the development of an entirely new telescope technology capable of observing the entire overhead sky with digital signal processing techniques at radio frequencies that received Canadian Foundation for Innovation funding. This digital telescope technology is poised to open an entirely new window on the cosmos and reveal the expansion history of the universe at half its present age, when dark energy appears to have become dominant. His impact is evidenced both with metrics such as citations and through the science return from his high profile collaborations. nominator citation

The CAP Herzberg medal is awarded for outstanding achievement in any field of research by a Canadian physicist who has successfully defended their doctoral thesis within the last 12 years at the time of the award, excluding an allowance of one year per child for parental leave. The CAP Herzberg Medal was first introduced in 1970 and is awarded annually. Prior to 2011, the medal was awarded for outstanding achievement by a Canadian physicist under the age of 40.

Prof. Matthew Adam Dobbs will be presented with the 2014 CAP Herzberg Medal at the 2014 CAP Congress, hosted by Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, from June 16-20, at the end of his plenary talk and will be recognized during the Congress banquet to be held on Thursday, June 19, 2014. Please refer to the Congress program for the schedule of plenary talks by CAP medal winners. medal description

The Canadian Association of Physicists, founded in 1945, is a professional association representing over 1600 individual physicists and physics students in Canada, the U.S. and overseas, as well as a number of Corporate, Institutional, and Departmental Members. In addition to its learned activities, the CAP also undertakes a number of activities intended to encourage students to pursue a career in physics. cap description

joint description

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For more information, please contact:

Canadian Association of Physicists
Tel: (613) 562-5614
Fax: (613) 562-5615
E-mail: cap@uottawa.cacap contact and joint contact