The IMSA Great Minds Program®
Dr. Angela Olinto
Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics, and a member of the Enrico Fermi Institute and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics at the University of Chicago.
November 9, 2006
“Mysteries of the Extreme Universe”
The origin of the highest energy cosmic particles is a mystery. Are they relics of the beginning of the universe or messengers from giant black holes? Their energies are so extreme that their propagation tests Einstein's theory of special relativity. To solve this mystery, scientists are building the largest observatory (over 1,000 square miles) for ultra-high energy particles.
Angela V. Olinto received her B.S. in Physics from the Pontificia Universidade Catolica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (1981) and her Ph.D. in Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987). After M.I.T, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Fermi National Laboratory in the Cosmology Group and then a Senior Research Associate and Senior Lecturer at the University of Chicago. Olinto is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has served on many advisory committees for the NRC, DoE, NSF, and NASA. Since 1995, Olinto has been a member of the Aspen Center for Physics where she currently serves as a Trustee.