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Rennan Barkana
 
Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics
Contact Information:
Postal Address:
School of Physics and Astronomy
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, 69978
ISRAEL
Phone: 972-3-6405993
Fax: 972-3-6408179
Secy: 972-3-6407413 (Margie)
email: barkana@wise.tau.ac.il [send]
Currently Looking for Students and Postdocs! [details]
Curriculum Vitae
Education:
1997 Ph.D. in Physics; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (M.I.T.)
1993 B.A. in Math and Physics (Summa Cum Laude, with Honors); University of Pennsylvania
Academic Positions:
2008 (Spring)   Moore Distinguished Scholar, Caltech
2007 (Fall)   Visiting Associate Professor, ICRR, University of Tokyo
2001 - present   Senior Lecturer, Tel Aviv University
2000 - 2001   Postdoctoral Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (Toronto)
1997 - 2000   Postdoctoral Member, Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton)
Post-Ph.D. Awards:
2007 - 2008   Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation [link]
2008   Moore Distinguished Scholar, Caltech
2007 - 2008   Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, Harvard (declined) [link]
2001 - 2004   Alon Fellowship, Israeli Council of Higher Education
Major external activities and grants
2010   Principal organizer, Aspen Winter Astrophysics Conference on "The High Redshift Universe: A Multi-Wavelength View" [link]
2009 - 2012   U.S. National Science Foundation Grant (PI: Judd Bowman)
2009 - 2013   Israel Science Foundation Grant
2008   Scientific Organizing Committee, 23'rd IAP (Paris) Colloquium
2007   Space Telescope Science Institute, Review Panel of Hubble Space Telescope proposals
2006   Principal organizer, John Bahcall Physics Day (Tel Aviv University) [link]
2006   Principal organizer, Aspen Winter Astrophysics Conference on "Cosmological Probes of Baryons and Dark Matter" [link]
2005 - 2010 (frozen 2007/8)   U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation Grant (with Avi Loeb)
2005 - 2008   Israel Science Foundation Grant
2002 - 2005   Israel Science Foundation Grant
2002 - 2005   U.S. National Science Foundation Grant (PI: Avi Loeb)
2003   NATO Grant (with Avi Loeb)
2000   Harvard-Smithsonian Institution Short-Term Visitor Award

Personal Information:
1973 Born in Haifa, Israel
U.S. Citizen
Married to Riki and father to Or (Dec. 12'th, 2006) and Ariel (Oct. 7'th, 2009)
Research Interests
Theoretical Astrophysics and Cosmology
Current research topics: 21-cm cosmology, formation of the first stars and quasars, cosmic reionization, galaxy formation, large-scale structure, and gravitational lensing.
Recent (2009) news article in Science on 21-cm cosmology: Link, PDF.
Published Papers
Selected Publications:
  • "Detecting Early Galaxies Through Their 21-cm Signature", Smadar Naoz and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, accepted (2008).
  • "The First Stars in the Universe", Smadar Naoz, Shay Noter, and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, 373, 98 (2006).
  • "The First Stars in the Universe and Cosmic Reionization", Rennan Barkana, Science , 313, 931 (2006).
  • "Detecting the Earliest Galaxies Through Two New Sources of 21cm Fluctuations", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal , 626, 1 (2005).
  • "A Method for Separating the Physics from the Astrophysics of High-Redshift 21cm Fluctuations", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal Letters, 624, 65 (2005).
  • "Unusually Large Fluctuations in the Statistics of Galaxy Formation at High Redshift", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal , 609, 474 (2004).
  • "Spectral Signature of Cosmological Infall Around the First Quasars", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Nature , 421, 341 (2003).
  • ``In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe'', Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Physics Reports , 349, 125 (2001) [link] .
  • ``Fuzzy Cold Dark Matter: The Wave Properties of Ultralight Particles'', Wayne Hu, Rennan Barkana and Andrei Gruzinov, Physical Review Letters , 85, 1158 (2000).
  • "Analysis of Time Delays in the Gravitational Lens PG 1115+080", Rennan Barkana, The Astrophysical Journal , 489, 21 (1997).
You can find here the full list of 46 refereed publications distributed within the following journals: Science, Nature, Physical Review Letters, Physics Reports, Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics, Reports on Progress in Physics, The Astrophysical Journal, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, Physical Review D, and New Astronomy.
Teaching
Physics and Astronomy courses: Full details available here.
Radio Interview in Hebrew on the Cosmic Microwave Background (4.38 MB, 6:23 min, MP3).
Popular Lecture in Hebrew on Cosmology (81 min video + power point lecture).