Renée Hložek looks to the stars through a telescope above U of T’s McLennan Physical Laboratories. Photo: Supplied.
By Sean McNeely, Arts & Science News
Renée Hložek is a cosmologist advancing our understanding of the universe.
Photo credit: Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR).
For advancing our understanding of the universe’s structure, origin and evolution, cosmologist Renée Hložek has received the Rutherford Memorial Medal from the Royal Society of Canada (RSC).
“It was something that I wanted, but not something that I ever really expected to get because there’re so many great people in Canada, so I’m kind of shocked, but pleased,” says Hložek, an associate professor at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics and the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
“I work in big teams, so my work represents a ton of people working together. I wouldn’t be here without the support of all the people in my collaborations — building instruments and figuring out how to do analysis and all of that good stuff.”
The Rutherford Memorial Medal has been awarded annually by the RSC since 1980 in recognition of researchers in chemistry or physics in the early stages of their career.
“I’m delighted for Renée to receive this prestigious honour which is so well-deserved,” says Antoinette HandleyAntoinette Handley, acting dean of the Faculty of Arts & Science and a professor of political science. “Renée’s passion for astrophysics, paired with her worldclass research is leading us closer and closer to truly understanding what the universe is made of and how it’s changing over time. My heartfelt congratulations on her being named a Rutherford Memorial Medal recipient.”
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in northern Chile. Photo courtesy of the Rubin Observatory.
“Renee is an awesome colleague who inspires me and everybody else in the department every single day, both with her research prowess and her insight into people and systems,” adds Roberto Abraham, chair of the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics.
“She’s impressive within about two nanoseconds of meeting her, and I’m both super pleased and totally unsurprised that she won the Rutherford Memorial Medal — it’s so hugely well deserved!”
In addition to being a surprise, receiving the medal was tremendously uplifting.
“I’m trying to put the puzzle of the universe together and figure out which pieces connect to which,” she says. “I do this job because I’m curious about figuring out what the universe is made of. We’re trying to understand things and pursuing different directions to tackle these problems. So it’s nice to sometimes take a break and be told, ‘You know what? Good job.’”
The Rutherford Medal is the latest of several prestigious awards for Hložek.
Previous accolades include her being named a 2020 Sloan Research Fellow. In 2021, she was the recipient of the Canadian Astronomical Society’s Harvey B. Richer Gold Medal for early career research in astronomy. The following year, she was named a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
While the fundamental questions Hložek asks and seeks to answer may be simple, the research to solve them is anything but.
Currently, she is a member of the recently decommissioned Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration, as well as the active Simons Observatory in northern Chile, where she studies the Cosmic Microwave Background — light from the universe when it was approximately 400,000 years old. Research from these projects may uncover secrets about star formation in the early universe.
The Simons Observatory in Atacama, Chile. Photo courtesy of the Simons Observatory.
“The Simons Observatory has already started taking preliminary data, so we are going to have ‘science-ready’ data flowing reasonably soon,” she says.
Hložek is also investigating dark matter and dark energy — mysterious forces that govern and compose 95 per cent of our universe — through her work with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s LSST dark energy science collaboration, where she now serves as its spokesperson.
Gravity, which acts on matter, like the normal matter we are made of, and the puzzling dark matter that makes up a large fraction of all the matter in the universe, acts as a kind of “cosmic cement” that slows down the expansion of the universe, while dark energy is thought to be an anti-gravitational force that contributes to its speeding up.
“Renée is pursuing a line of research that is arguably tackling the biggest questions in physics and astronomy: what are dark matter and dark energy?” says Suresh Sivanandam, director of the Dunlap Institute.
“She is accomplishing this through her leadership role in the dark energy consortium of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory and her broader efforts to engage the Canadian community in this upcoming exciting new facility. Renée’s winning the Rutherford Medal is well-deserved and a wonderful achievement. We are very proud of her accomplishment.”
“The Rubin Observatory is starting commissioning activities soon with the first data flowing next year, so I’ll have my hands full,” says Hložek. “In fact, the next year to 18 months is going to be an explosion of data which is super exciting, and something I’ve been working for and waiting for, for a significant fraction of my career.”
Hložek is also part of a recently created team behind the Canadian Data Intensive Astrophysics PLatform (CanDIAPL).
Funded by the Canada Foundation for Innovation (CFI) and the Dunlap Institute, CanDIAPL is a multimillion-dollar project that will build a computational data centre and other information-based infrastructure that will make data from large-scale telescope surveys, like the Rubin Observatory, accessible to the broader Canadian scientific community.
“I’m really excited about that,” says Hložek.
“It’s important to me that other researchers in Canada can use public data. Over the next five years, we’re going to be building tools to enable people to look at the data, process it remotely on the CanDIAPL platform and then do real science with it.”
With so many exciting projects underway, it’s no surprise that Hložek is feeling especially grateful.
“I’m so lucky that I get to wake up and ask questions that I feel are on everybody’s minds,” she says.
“What makes the universe tick? How is it expanding? How’s it going to change? How is the universe going to end? Instead of just thinking about that late at night when you’re at the cottage looking at the sky, I get to go to my computer and actually try to answer those questions.”
