Licia Verde, from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB, among the awarded researchers with the Breakthrough Prize

Licia Verde, ICREA researcher from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB, IEEC-UB).
Licia Verde, ICREA researcher from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB, IEEC-UB).
Research
(14/12/2017)

The 2018 Breakthrough Prize on Fundamental Physics was awarded to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Prove (WMAP) team, for a project that studies the anisotropies in background radiation. The prize has been awarded to the twenty-seven researchers that belong to this team, like the ICREA researcher Licia Verde, from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB, IEEC-UB).

Licia Verde, ICREA researcher from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB, IEEC-UB).
Licia Verde, ICREA researcher from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB, IEEC-UB).
Research
14/12/2017

The 2018 Breakthrough Prize on Fundamental Physics was awarded to the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Prove (WMAP) team, for a project that studies the anisotropies in background radiation. The prize has been awarded to the twenty-seven researchers that belong to this team, like the ICREA researcher Licia Verde, from the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the UB (ICCUB, IEEC-UB).

The team of WMAP obtained this award for the “detailed maps of the early universe that greatly improved our knowledge of the evolution of the cosmos and the fluctuations that seeded the formation of galaxies", notes the jury.

Funded by private sponsors like Mark Zuckerberg or Anne Wojcicki, the Breakthrough Prizes recognize the achievements of scientists in the fields of Life Sciences, Fundamental Physics and Mathematics with awards that are $3 million each, which makes these the largest individual monetary prizes in science.

Launched in 2001, the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) mapped the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with unprecedented precision. The project opened a new era of quantitative cosmology that led to the establishment of the Standard Model of Cosmology. Among other aspects, the interpretation of WMPA data allows scientists to determine the age of the universe (about 13.8 billion years), its rate of accelerating expansion (about 70 kilometres per second per megaparsec) and its basic composition (about 5% "normal” matter, 24 % dark matter and 71 % dark energy).

Licia Verde, ICREA researcher at ICCUB (IEEC-UB), joined the WMAP team in 2001, when she was a Chandra Fellow in Princeton University. Among other contributions, she contributed to the cosmological analysis and led the paper the team published in 2003, Parameter Estimation Methodology, the sixth most cited paper in the field of Astronomy and Astrophysics according to Web of Science. The WMAP team also holds the prestigious Shaw Prize for Astronomy (2010) and the Gruber Prize in Cosmology (2012). Licia Verde has also been awarded with two European Research Council projects.