Keith Vanderlinde
Program
Junior Fellow Academy
Appointment
Junior Fellow, Cosmology and Gravity
Institution
McGill University
Country
Canada 
Keith Vanderlinde has been a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University since 2009, working with CIFAR Cosmology and Gravity Scholars Matt Dobbs and Gil Holder. Keith began his Junior Fellowship at McGill in March 2011, with Drs. Dobbs and Holder continuing as his supervisors. Keith completed his Ph.D. in Physics in 2008 at the University of Chicago under the supervision of Dr. Bruce Winstein. He also holds a B.Sc. in Physics with Electrical Engineering from MIT. During his doctoral studies, Keith worked as a Research Assistant at the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics in Chicago. He also helped to develop and install several successful exhibits at Chicago’s Adler Planetarium and Museum of Science and Industry. After completing his Ph.D., he worked for eleven months as an on-site scientist at the South Pole Telescope (SPT) in Antarctica, where he developed an expertise in the hardware used and the data being gathered.
Keith’s research focuses on understanding the growth of structure within our universe, the process by which the fairly uniform gas that came out of the Big Bang clumped up to form galaxies and all the structure we see today. In a cosmological context, this means studying growth at the largest scales, measuring the sizes and populations of huge galaxy clusters, and how these evolved over cosmic timescales (billions of years). Such clusters leave a distinct signature on light passing through them, and by looking for this signature within the Cosmic Microwave Background – the leftover light from the Big Bang – the SPT is able to detect and characterize hundreds of these clusters at extreme distances, seeing them as they were billions of years ago. This “census” of structure across cosmic timescales allows us to determine what forces were at play when, and in particular characterize the mysterious Dark Energy which is now believed to make up the vast majority of our universe. Keith divides his time between lab work on electronics, field work gathering observations, and analysis work reducing and understanding the data and its scientific implications.
Watch a video of Keith Vanderlinde's experience working with the South Pole telescope.
Keith’s research focuses on understanding the growth of structure within our universe, the process by which the fairly uniform gas that came out of the Big Bang clumped up to form galaxies and all the structure we see today. In a cosmological context, this means studying growth at the largest scales, measuring the sizes and populations of huge galaxy clusters, and how these evolved over cosmic timescales (billions of years). Such clusters leave a distinct signature on light passing through them, and by looking for this signature within the Cosmic Microwave Background – the leftover light from the Big Bang – the SPT is able to detect and characterize hundreds of these clusters at extreme distances, seeing them as they were billions of years ago. This “census” of structure across cosmic timescales allows us to determine what forces were at play when, and in particular characterize the mysterious Dark Energy which is now believed to make up the vast majority of our universe. Keith divides his time between lab work on electronics, field work gathering observations, and analysis work reducing and understanding the data and its scientific implications.
Watch a video of Keith Vanderlinde's experience working with the South Pole telescope.