Faculty Type: 
Active Faculty
Title: 
Associate Professor
Address: 
Varian Physics Bldg. Rm. 346
382 Via Pueblo Mall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-4060
Phone Number: 
650-736-7880
Group Website: 
Group site: Polar Array
Support Staff: 
Dana Volponi

How did the universe begin?

Professor Kuo’s group seeks to answer this profound question by studying the most ancient light, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, emitted when the universe was in its infancy. The polarization in the CMB contains information on the birth of the universe (big bang/inflation), as well as its subsequent evolution.

Professor Kuo is involved in both cosmological interpretation and instrumentation/technology development. The group frequently adopts advanced experimental techniques, such as cryogenics, superconductivity, and micromachining, to maximize detector sensitivity to the faint CMB signal.
His group’s ongoing projects are all CMB polarization experiments based at the South Pole.

Current areas of focus:
- BICEP/BICEP2/Keck Array: A series of degree-scale experiments targeting signatures of primordial gravitational waves with increasing sensitivity.
- POLAR-1/POLAR Array: Few-arcminute-scale polarization experiments targeting both gravitational waves and gravitational lensing signatures.

CAREER HISTORY

  • B.S., Physics, National Taiwan University, 1994.
  • Ph.D., Astrophysics, U.C. Berkeley, 2003.
  • Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), National Research Council postdoctoral fellow.
  • Senior Postdoctoral Scholar, California Institute of Technology
  • Assistant Professor of Physics, Stanford, and SLAC, 2008-2014
  • Associate Professor of Physics, and of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at SLAC, 2014-
  • Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, 2009-

HONORS AND AWARDS

Professor Kuo was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship in 2009, an MRI (Major Research Instrumentation) grant in 2010, and an NSF Faculty Early CAREER Award in 2011.

Group Members

Undergraduate Students:

Albert Wandui

Graduate Students:

Jae Hwan Kang
Eric Yang
James Grayson

Postdoctoral Fellows:

Tosh Namikawa
Wai-Ling Kimmy Wu (jointly w/UC Berkeley)

Research Associates:

Keith L. Thompson (Ph.D. U.T. Austin)
Ki Won Yoon (Ph.D. Caltech)
Zeeshan Ahmed (Ph.D. Caltech)

Research Assistants:

Ethan D. Karpel

Former Grad students

Sarah Stokes
James E. Tolan

Former Postdocs

R. Walter Ogburn (Ph.D. Stanford)