Chris Hirata: Biography, Achievements & Lasting Legacy

Christopher Michael Hirata (born November 30, 1982) is a Japanese-American cosmologist and astrophysicist.

Hirata was 13 years old when he won the gold medal in 1996 at the International Physics Olympiad. He received a bachelor's degree in Physics at Caltech in 2001, at the age of 18. He received his PhD under the supervision of Uroš Seljak in 2005 from Princeton University in Astrophysics (thesis: "Weak Gravitational Lensing Theory and Data Analysis"). From 2005 to 2007 he was a visiting scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study. From 2006 to 2012, he was assistant professor and then full professor at Caltech before moving to the Ohio State University the following academic year in the same capacity. He is currently a professor at OSU's Center for Cosmology and AstroParticle Physics (CCAPP).