Cosmic Dawn Center


The Cosmic Dawn Center is an Astronomy/Cosmology research center, founded as a collaboration between the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen and DTU Space of the Danish Technical University. The center is led by center director and NBI Professor Sune Toft and center co-director Thomas Greve, Professor at DTU and UCL. The main objective of the center is to investigate the period known as the Cosmic Dawn, i.e. the reionization of the Universe and the formation of the first galaxies, through observations as well as through theory and simulations. The Cosmic Dawn Center also runs two summer programs for mainly U.S. undergraduates, the DAWN-IRES program, funded by National Science Foundation, and a SURF. program for California Institute of Technology students

Research

Research conducted at the center is focused on the specific period in the history of the Universe known as the Cosmic Dawn. This largely unexplored period, 300-600 million years after the Big Bang is when the first stars, black holes and galaxies are believed to have formed. Many of the observations used by the center originate from the Atacama Large Millimeter Array, one of the more powerful telescopes in the world. In the future, the center aims to mainly use the James Webb Space Telescope, the Euclid Telescope of the European Space Agency , but is also involved with many other missions.

Major publications and collaborations

Accurate as of 2020-04-17. Taken as the highest impact papers with participation of at least one DAWN affiliate.

Major papers

As per 18 April 2020, DAWN authors have published at least 187 refereed papers garnering 1602 citations, which, among others, can be found at the NASA/ADS library. A paper library including all papers written by DAWN members since the official inauguration can be found .

Collaborations

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A short summary of research conducted by the 2019 SURF students at The Cosmic Dawn Center can be found on the Caltech Student-Faculty program website.

Funding

The Cosmic Dawn Center is a DNRF Center of Excellence.

Senior academic staff

As of 15 April 2020
Besides these, DAWN employs a number of Affiliate Professors, Postdocs and PhDs, as well as the administrative staff.