Andrew Chael

Andrew Alan Chael is an American astrophysicist using algorithms to infer image properties of the near-horizon regions, or "shadows," of supermassive black holes by comparison with observational data. He is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, which in April 2019 captured the first image of a black hole[1][2] in the giant elliptical galaxy M87. Chael also uses general relativistic magnetohydrodynamic simulations such as KORAL to infer characteristics of heretofore unobserved black hole shadows.[3]

Andrew Chael
Born
Andrew Alan Chael

January 1991
Education
Known forEHT Imaging algorithm
Scientific career
Fields
ThesisSimulating and Imaging Supermassive Black Hole Accretion Flows
Websiteachael.github.io

Early life and education

Andrew Chael was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1991.

He graduated Harvard University with a Ph.D. in Astronomy in 2019,[4] with his dissertation on "Simulating and Imaging Supermassive Black Hole Accretion Flows" related to his work on the Event Horizon Telescope.

Research and career

Chael developed the fast and versatile eht-im (EHT Imaging) software,[5] which can generate images from synthetic data in seconds using a cpu, e.g., on a laptop. After the EHT used four independent teams to blindly reconstruct M87 data using regularized maximum likelihood and CLEAN algorithms,[6] Chael's EHT Imaging Pipeline [7] was applied to synthetic data compared to the real data to extract M87 parameters such as ring size and asymmetry from a space of 37,500 parameter combinations. Other pipelines used by EHT for M87 include DIFMAP (1,008 parameter combinations explored) and SMILI (10,800 parameter combinations explored).[6]

Chael is currently a Hubble Fellow at the Princeton Center for Theoretical Sciences,[8] and Princeton Gravity Initiative.[9]

He is highly decorated within the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, being the only member to win both the Outstanding PhD Thesis and Early Career Awards.[10]

Personal life

Chael is an openly gay man.[11]

References
  1. The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, "First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. I. The Shadow of the Supermassive Black Hole" The Astrophysical Journal Letters 875:L1 (2019)
  2. Lee Billings. "At Last, a Black Hole's Image Revealed".
  3. Chael, Andrew; Rowan, Michael; Narayan, Ramesh; Johnson, Michael; Sironi, Lorenzo (2018). "The role of electron heating physics in images and variability of the Galactic Centre black hole Sagittarius A*". Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. 478 (4): 5209–5229. arXiv:1804.06416. doi:10.1093/mnras/sty1261. S2CID 55860213.
  4. "Harvard PhD Theses in Physics, 2001-2020".
  5. "Imaging". Andrew Chael GitHub. Retrieved October 13, 2020.
  6. The Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, "First M87 Event Horizon Telescope Results. IV. Imaging the Central Supermassive Black Hole" The Astrophysical Journal Letters 875:L4 52pp (2019)
  7. "Here's What Scientists Think Their First Picture of a Black Hole Might Look Like". Astronomy. April 3, 2020. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
  8. "Andrew Chael". Princeton Center for Theoretical Sciences. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
  9. "Andrew Chael". Princeton Gravity Initiative. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
  10. "Awards by EHT". Event Horizon Telescope. August 19, 2020. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
  11. Elfrink, Tim (April 12, 2019). "Trolls hijacked a scientist's image to attack Katie Bouman. They picked the wrong astrophysicist". Washington Post. Retrieved December 30, 2020.
  • , WIRED, July 18, 2019
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