Curriculum Vitae: Rennan Barkana, Ph. D.



School of Physics and Astronomy
Tel Aviv University
Tel Aviv, 69978, ISRAEL
Work Tel: 972-3-6405993
Email: barkana@wise.tau.ac.il
Homepage: http://wise-obs.tau.ac.il/~barkana/


Academic Positions:

  • Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, 6/2009-present.
  • Moore Distinguished Scholar, Caltech, 4/2008-9/2008.
  • Visiting Associate Professor, Institute for Cosmic Ray Research, University of Tokyo, Japan, 10/2007-3/2008.
  • Senior Lecturer, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Tel Aviv University, 10/2001-5/2009 (Tenured: 2006).
  • Postdoctoral Fellow at Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, Toronto, 10/2000-9/2001.
  • Postdoctoral Researcher (``Member'') at Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, 9/1997 - 8/2000.



Post-Ph.D. Grants, Honors and Awards:

  • U.S. National Science Foundation Grant AST-0905990 (PI: Judd Bowman), 2009-2012.
  • Israel Science Foundation Individual Grant 823/09, 2009-2013.
  • Tel Aviv University, Fund for Promotion of Research, Grant, 2008/9.
  • Fellowship, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, 2007/8.
  • Moore Distinguished Scholar, Caltech, 2008.
  • Radcliffe Institute Fellowship, Harvard, 2007/8 (declined).
  • Space Telescope Science Institute, Member of Review Panel evaluating Cycle 16 proposals for the Hubble Space Telescope, 3/2007.
  • U.S.-Israel Binational Science Foundation Grant 2004386 (with Avi Loeb), 2005-2010 (frozen 2007/8).
  • Israel Science Foundation Individual Grant 629/05, 2005-2008.
  • Israel Science Foundation Individual Grant #28/02/01, 2002-2005.
  • U.S. National Science Foundation Grant AST-0204514 (PI: Avi Loeb), 2002-2005.
  • NATO Grant PST.CLG.979414 with Avi Loeb, 2003.
  • Alon Fellowship, Israeli Council of Higher Education, 2001 - 2004.
  • Harvard-Smithsonian Institution Short-Term Visitor Award, 8/2000.

Research Interests:

  • Theoretical Astrophysics and Cosmology: 21-cm cosmology, formation of the first stars and quasars, cosmic reionization, galaxy formation, large-scale structure, and gravitational lensing.

Conference Organization:

  • Principal organizer (and speaker): The 2010 Aspen Winter Astrophysics Conference on "The High Redshift Universe: A Multi-Wavelength View", Feb. 7-12, 2010.
  • Organizer of the Astrophysics Sessions at the 54'th Annual Meeting of the Israeli Physical Society, Ben-Gurion University, Dec. 28, 2008.
  • Member of Scientific Organizing Committee, 23'rd IAP (Paris) Colloquium on "Far Away: Light in the young universe at redshift beyond 3", Jul. 7-11, 2008.
  • Principal organizer of the John Bahcall Physics Day at Tel Aviv University, Apr. 30, 2006.
  • Principal organizer (and speaker): The 2006 Aspen Winter Astrophysics Conference on "Cosmological Probes of Baryons and Dark Matter", Jan. 22-28, 2006.

Conference Talks:

  • Invited Speaker to "Hydrogen Cosmology" workshop at Harvard, May 2011.
  • CITA@25/Bond@60: "The Theory of the Universe and Everything in It", Toronto, Canada, May 2010.
  • Workshop: "Focus week on non-Gaussianities in the sky", IPMU Tokyo, Japan, Apr. 2009.
  • Invited Speaker to Harvard University Conference on "21cm Cosmology", May 2008.
  • Workshop on "Early universe and physics beyond the standard model", Tokyo, Japan, Dec. 2007.
  • Invited Speaker to "HI Survival through Cosmic Times", Tuscany, Italy, 2007.
  • Invited Speaker to "From Planets to Galaxies", Budapest, Hungary, 2006.
  • Reionizing the Universe, Groningen, The Netherlands, 2005.
  • KITP Workshop on "Galaxy-Intergalactic Medium Interactions", Sep.-Oct. 2004.
  • The Large Scale Structure of Gas and Mass in the High Redshift Universe, Technion, Israel, 2004.
  • Invited Speaker to the Oort Workshop on "CMB and first objects at the end of the dark ages: observational consequences of reionization", Holland, Apr. 2004.
  • Aspen Winter Conference on "The Large-Scale Distribution of Mass & Light in the Universe", Jan. 2004.
  • ETH Zurich Conference on "Stars and Structure Formation: From First Light to the Milky Way", Aug. 2003.
  • Invited speaker to Kloster Irsee Workshop on "The Formation and Early Evolution of Galaxies", Germany, July 2003.
  • Jerusalem Workshop on "Galaxy Formation", June 2003.
  • Aspen Astrophysics Workshop on "The Baryonic Universe", Jan. 2003.
  • Elba International Workshop on "Early Cosmic Structures and the End of the Dark Ages", Italy, June 2002.
  • Annual Meeting of the Israeli Physics Society, Dec. 2001.
  • Tsukuba International Workshop on ``The Physics of Galaxy Formation'', Japan, July 2000.
  • Invited speaker to Harvard University Conference on "The First Generation of Cosmic Structures", May 2000.
  • Boston University Conference on "Gravitational Lensing: Recent Progress and Future Goals", July 1999.
  • Aspen Winter Astrophysics meeting on "Cosmological Implications of the Local Group", Jan. 1999.

Refereed Publications:

  • "Triaxiality and non-thermal gas pressure in Abell 1689", Andrea Morandi, Marceau Limousin, Yoel Rephaeli, Keiichi Umetsu, Rennan Barkana, Tom Broadhurst, and Haakon Dahle, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2011).
  • "Studying cosmic reionization with observations of the global 21-cm signal", Andrea Morandi and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2011).
  • "Suppression and Spatial Variation of Early Galaxies and Minihalos", Dmitriy Tseliakhovich, Rennan Barkana, and Christopher Hirata, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2011).
  • "Scale-Dependent Bias of Galaxies from Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2011).
  • "The nonlinear evolution of baryonic overdensities in the early universe: Initial conditions of numerical simulations", Smadar Naoz, Naoki Yoshida, and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society (2011).
  • "Quantifying the collisionless nature of dark matter and galaxies in A1689", Doron Lemze, Yoel Rephaeli, Rennan Barkana, Tom Broadhurst, Rick Wagner, and Mike Norman, The Astrophysical Journal, 728, 40 (2011).
  • "Strong-Lensing Analysis of a Complete Sample of 12 MACS Clusters at z>0.5: Mass Models and Einstein Radii", Adi Zitrin, Tom Broadhurst, Rennan Barkana, Yoel Rephaeli, and Narciso Benitez, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 410, 1939 (2011).
  • "Statistics of 21-cm fluctuations in cosmic reionization simulations: PDFs and difference PDFs", Vera Gluscevic and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 408, 2373 (2010).
  • "Measuring the History of Cosmic Reionization using the 21-cm PDF from Simulations", Kazuhide Ichikawa, Rennan Barkana, Ilian Iiev, Garrelt Mellema, and Paul Shapiro, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 406, 2521 (2010).
  • "Concentrating the Dark Matter in Galaxy Clusters through Tidal Stripping of Baryonically-Compressed Galactic Halos", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 405, 1969 (2010).
  • "Gas in Simulations of High Redshift Galaxies and Minihalos", Smadar Naoz, Rennan Barkana, and Andrei Mesinger, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 399, 369 (2009).
  • "Dynamical Study of A1689 from Wide-Field VLT/VIMOS Spectroscopy: Mass Profile, Concentration Parameter, and Velocity Anisotropy", Doron Lemze, Tom Broadhurst, Yoel Rephaeli, Rennan Barkana, and Keiichi Umetsu, The Astrophysical Journal, 701, 1336 (2009).
  • "Studying the sources of cosmic reionization with 21-cm fluctuations", Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 397, 1454 (2009).
  • "The Infancy of Cosmic Reionization", Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 391, 727 (2008).
  • "Large Einstein Radii: A Problem for ΛCDM", Tom Broadhurst and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 390, 1647 (2008).
  • "Mass and Gas Profiles in A1689: Joint X-ray and Lensing Analysis", Doron Lemze, Rennan Barkana, Tom Broadhurst, and Yoel Rephaeli, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 386, 1092 (2008).
  • "Detecting Early Galaxies Through Their 21-cm Signature", Smadar Naoz and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, 385, 63 (2008).
  • "The Difference PDF of 21-cm Fluctuations: A Powerful Statistical Tool for Probing Cosmic Reionization", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 384, 1069 (2008).
  • "The Formation and Gas Content of High Redshift Galaxies and Minihalos", Smadar Naoz and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 377, 667 (2007).
  • "The Physics and Early History of the Intergalactic Medium", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Reports on Progress in Physics , 70, 627 (2007).
  • "On Correlated Random Walks and 21-cm Fluctuations During Cosmic Reionization", Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 376, 1784 (2007).
  • "The First Stars in the Universe", Smadar Naoz, Shay Noter, and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, 373, 98 (2006).
  • "Separating out the Alcock-Paczynski Effect on 21cm Fluctuations", Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 372, 259 (2006).
  • "Light-Cone Anisotropy in 21-cm Fluctuations during the Epoch of Reionization", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 372, 43 (2006).
  • "Detecting Reionization in the Star Formation Histories of High-Redshift Galaxies", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 371, 395 (2006).
  • "The First Stars in the Universe and Cosmic Reionization", Rennan Barkana, Science , 313, 931 (2006).
  • "A Cosmic Relation between Extinction and Star Formation", Oren Zoran, Rennan Barkana, and Rodger I. Thompson, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, 368, 47 (2006).
  • "Probing the Epoch of Early Baryonic Infall Through 21-cm Fluctuations", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Letters, 363, 36 (2005).
  • "Growth of Linear Perturbations before the Era of the First Galaxies", Smadar Naoz and Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 362, 1047 (2005).
  • "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).
  • "Was the Universe Reionized at Redshift 10?", Abraham Loeb, Rennan Barkana, and Lars Hernquist, The Astrophysical Journal , 620, 553 (2005).
  • "Unusually Large Fluctuations in the Statistics of Galaxy Formation at High Redshift", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal , 609, 474 (2004).
  • "GRBs versus Quasars: Lyman-alpha Signatures of Reionization versus Cosmological Infall", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal , 601, 64 (2004).
  • "A Model For Infall Around Virialized Halos", Rennan Barkana, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society , 347, 59 (2004).
  • "Spectral Signature of Cosmological Infall Around the First Quasars", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Nature 421, 341 (2003).
  • "Effective Screening due to Minihalos during the Epoch of Reionization", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal 578, 1 (2002).
  • "The Star Formation Rate Intensity Distribution Function -- Comparison of Observations with Hierarchical Galaxy Formation", Rennan Barkana, New Astronomy 7, 337 (2002).
  • "An Analytical Approach to Inhomogeneous Structure Formation", Evan Scannapieco and Rennan Barkana, The Astrophysical Journal 571, 585 (2002).
  • "Did the Universe Reionize at Redshift Six?", Rennan Barkana, New Astronomy 7, 85 (2002).
  • ``Constraints on Warm Dark Matter from Cosmological Reionization'', Rennan Barkana, Zoltan Haiman and Jerry Ostriker, The Astrophysical Journal 558, 482 (2001).
  • ``The Reionization of the Universe by the First Stars and Quasars'', Abraham Loeb and Rennan Barkana, Annual Reviews of Astronomy and Astrophysics , 39, 19 (2001).
  • ``In the Beginning: The First Sources of Light and the Reionization of the Universe'', Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, Physics Reports 349, 125 (2001) [also available here] .
  • ``Fuzzy Cold Dark Matter: The Wave Properties of Ultralight Particles'', Wayne Hu, Rennan Barkana and Andrei Gruzinov, Physical Review Letters 85, 1158 (2000).
  • "Identifying the Reionization Redshift from the Cosmic Star Formation Rate", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal 539, 20 (2000).
  • "High-Redshift Galaxies: Their Predicted Size and Surface Brightness Distributions and Their Gravitational Lensing Probability", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal 531, 613 (2000).
  • "The Photo-Evaporation of Dwarf Galaxies During Reionization", Rennan Barkana and Abraham Loeb, The Astrophysical Journal 523, 54 (1999).
  • "A Reassessment of the Data and Models of the Gravitational Lens Q0957+561", Rennan Barkana, Joseph Lehar, Emilio Falco, Norman Grogin, Charles Keeton, and Irwin Shapiro, The Astrophysical Journal 520, 479 (1999).
  • "A Possible Gravitational Lens in the Hubble Deep Field South", Rennan Barkana, Roger Blandford, and David Hogg, The Astrophysical Journal Letters 513, 91 (1999).
  • "Fast Calculation of a Family of Elliptical Mass Gravitational Lens Models", Rennan Barkana, The Astrophysical Journal 502, 531 (1998).
  • "Analysis of Time Delays in the Gravitational Lens PG 1115+080", Rennan Barkana, The Astrophysical Journal 489, 21 (1997).
  • ``Limits on a Stochastic Background of Gravitational Waves from Gravitational Lensing'', Rennan Bar-Kana, Physical Review D , 54, 7138 (1996).
  • ``Effect of Large-Scale Structure on Multiply Imaged Sources'', Rennan Bar-Kana, The Astrophysical Journal , 468, 17 (1996).
  • "Limits on Direct Detection of Gravitational Waves", Rennan Bar-Kana, Physical Review D , 50, 1157 (1994).

Non-Technical Reviews:

  • "The First Objects in the Universe", Rennan Barkana, Physics World, 16(2), 25 (2003).

Computer Codes Based on the Above Publications:

  • Gemini, a toolkit for analytical models of inhomogeneous structure formation. The code, based on "An Analytical Approach to Inhomogeneous Structure Formation" (see Refereed Publications, above), is available here.
  • FASTELL, a code to calculate quickly and accurately gravitational lensing due to a family of elliptical mass lens models. The code, based on ``Fast Calculation of a Family of Elliptical Mass Gravitational Lens Models'' (see Refereed Publications, above), is available here.

Media Stories Based on the Above Publications:

  • ``The First Star: Things Heated Up Quickly, Scientists Say'', on Space.com , July 17, 2006 (available here ).

  • ``Dark matter halos found?'', Nature Science Update , January 23, 2003 (available here ) .
  • ``First Milky Ways Found At Edge Of Universe'', Harvard press release, January 22, 2003 (available here ) .
  • ``Mystery Matter Helped Build First Galaxies, Study Suggests'', Space.com story, January 22, 2003 (available here ) .
  • ``Astronomers get peek at first galaxies'', UPI press release, January 22, 2003 (available here ) .
  • ``Birth of quasars is traced back to extra-big galaxies'', NJ Star-Ledger story, January 23, 2003 (available here ) .
  • ``First quasars shed light on the early universe'', PhysicsWeb.org story, January 23, 2003 (available here ) .
  • "Fingerprints of the First Big Galaxies", ScienceNow story, January 23, 2003 (available here ) .
  • "In the Beginning: Dark matter builds galaxies, feeds quasars", Science News 163, 4, pg. 51, January 25, 2003.
  • "Distant Milky Ways", Astronomy.com (available here ) .
  • "Two Israeli astrophysicists have discovered Milky Ways at the edge of the universe", Hayadan.org (Hebrew), January 24, 2003 (available here ) .
  • "Large galaxies after only one billion years", Ha'aretz newspaper (Hebrew), January 30, 2003 (available here ) .
  • "Just like the Milky Way but at the edge of the Universe", Ma'ariv newspaper (Hebrew), February 2, 2003 (available here ).

  • ``A Galactic Condensate'', Physical Review Focus 6, story 5, August 9, 2000 (available here ) .
  • ``Globs in Space'', in New Scientist magazine, August 26, p. 5 .
  • ``Bose-Einstein offers view on dwarf galaxies'', Laser Focus World 36 (10), October, 2000 (also available here ).

Graduate Education:

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology , 9/1993 - 8/1997.
  • Ph. D. in Physics in June 1997. Dissertation: "Gravitational Lensing as a Probe of Dark Matter, the Distance Scale, and Gravitational Waves in the Universe".
  • Advisor: Prof. Edmund Bertschinger.
  • Karl Taylor Compton Fellowship from the M.I.T. Physics Dept., 9/1993 - 8/1995.
  • 990/990 in Physics Subject GRE Exam, 990/990 in Mathematics Subject GRE Exam.

Undergraduate Education:

    University of Pennsylvania , 9/1990 - 5/1993.
  • Bachelor of Arts, May 1993.
  • Graduated Summa Cum Laude. Double major, with Honors in both Math and Physics.
  • W. Stevens Prize, "given to the most promising graduating Physics Major at the University of Pennsylvania", May 1993.
  • Senior Thesis with Prof. Paul Steinhardt, on "Three-Point Correlation Analysis of Periodicity in the Distribution of Galaxies".
  • Teaching Assistant in Mathematical Analysis (a junior math course), Spring 1993.
  • Dean's Scholar of the School of Arts and Sciences.
  • Selected as a "Goldwater Scholar in Mathematics, Science and Engineering" by the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Foundation, Spring 1992.
  • Elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa, the academic honor society.

Computer Skills:

  • Extensive programming experience in C and Fortran.
  • Some experience with Mathematica, C++, Matlab, HTML, Java, MPI, Pascal and Lisp.

Language Skills:

  • Fluent in English and Hebrew.

Personal Information:

  • Born in Haifa, Israel, in 1973.
  • Married with two children.
  • Citizen of the United States.
  • Hobby: Playing violin (including Concertmaster of "The Campus - Ramat HaSharon" orchestra)




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