Dr. Attila Kovacs

I graduated from Harvard University with an A.B. in physics, astrophysics, and astronomy in 1997, and received my Ph.D. in physics from Caltech in 2006 in the submillimeter astrophysics group lead by Tom G. Phillips. As a student, I pioneered a novel data reduction approach (CRUSH) and new observing modes (e.g. Lissajous scans) for submillimeter imaging arrays, designed wide-band SIS mixers, and brought the first far-infrared characterization of the submillimeter galaxy (SMG) population. Later, I worked at the Max Planck Institute for Radioastronomy in Bonn as post-doc, mentored by Karl Menten, where I was active in the optimization and commissioning of the APEX bolometer cameras LABOCA (and its polarimetry frontend PolKa) and SABOCA and conducted surveys with them. In 2009, I became an independent postdoc at the University of Minnesota, focusing on improving and commissioning the GISMO 2-mm camera for the IRAM 30-m telescope, and innovating the concept of lithographic on-chip spectrometers for the (sub)millimeter. Between 2012 and 2017, I went back to Caltech as a post-doc with Jonas Zmuidzinas, working on SuperSpec and MAKO, and the readout solution for kinetic inductance detectors (KIDs), and built the imaging pipeline for SOFIA/HAWC+. Since 2017 I am the software lead at the the Submillimeter Array (SMA). Beyond the technical work, I am very interested in studying the high-z Universe at mm-wavelengths.