Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud
Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud is an experimental astrophysicist who uses measurements of the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the big bang, to understand the origin, composition, and evolution of the universe. She has been a member of the EBEX experimental team since 2005, and she is currently overseeing the work of the Columbia team as they prepare to deploy the EBEX instrument to Antarctica later this year. The EBEX experiment will map a patch of the microwave sky from the top of the stratosphere while hanging from a NASA helium ballon. The resulting data set holds the promise of detecting a signal that originated when the universe was just a tiny fraction of a second old.
In 2010 Reichborn-Kjennerud received her PhD from Columbia University. During her graduate career she held a NASA fellowship, and she is currently an NSF Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow in the Miller Lab at Columbia. Before completing her graduate work Reichborn-Kjennerud taught secondary school science and math in Sydney, Australia, and New York City. She currently mentors a high school teacher in the lab and participates in a variety of science outreach activities.