Joshua Bloom

Joshua Simon Bloom (born June 8, 1974 in Washington, D.C.) is an American astrophysicist, full professor of astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the CTO and co-founder of the machine-learning company wise.io (acquired[1] by General Electric, 2016). He received a Bachelor of Arts in astronomy and astrophysics and physics from the Harvard College in 1996, an M.Phil from Cambridge University in 1997, and a PhD in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology in 2002. He was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard Society of Fellows from 2002 to 2005. His astronomy research focuses on gamma-ray bursts[2] and other astrophysical transients such as supernovae and tidal disruption events. He is author of the book What Are Gamma-Ray Bursts?[3] published by Princeton University Press in 2011.

Joshua Bloom
Born	Joshua Simon Bloom June 8, 1974 Washington, D.C., USA
Alma mater	Harvard College, A.B.. Cambridge University, M.Phil California Institute of Technology, PhD
Known for	Gamma-Ray Bursts, Artificial Intelligence
Awards	Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation Data-driven Discovery Fellow Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy Sloan Research Fellow Harvard Society of Fellows Hertz Foundation Fellow
Scientific career
Fields	Astrophysics, Computer Science
Institutions	University of California, Berkeley

Research

In 2009, ScienceWatch wrote that Bloom's gamma-ray bursts "work ranks at No. 10 by total cites, based on 85 papers cited a total of 3,639 times. Five of these papers are on the lists of the 20 most-cited papers over the past decade and over the past two years."[4] He has published over 250 refereed articles[5] and was principal investigator of the Peters Automated Infrared Telescope (PAIRITEL)[6] at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory in Arizona. He is also principal investigator of the Synoptic Infrared Survey Telescope (SASIR).[7] Project and was co-chair of the transients and variable star group of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST). Some of Bloom's current work focuses on the classification of astrophysical transients using machine-learning techniques.[8][9] He suggested[10] that GRB 110328A was due to a new class of relativistic outflow events from tidal disruption of a star by a massive black hole.

Honors and awards

Bloom was awarded the Herchel Smith Harvard Scholarship to Cambridge University in 1996, and was a Hertz Foundation Fellow at the California Institute of Technology. In 2006, Bloom was named as a Sloan Research Fellow by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. In 2008, he was included as one of Astronomy magazine's ten "rising stars.[11] In 2009, he was awarded the Newton Lacy Pierce Prize in Astronomy from the American Astronomical Society. In 2010, he was named as the Sophie and Tycho Brahe Visiting Professor at Copenhagen University.[12] He is the Co-Creator of the VOEvent messaging scheme for astronomical transients.

Teaching

Bloom teaches astronomy to graduate and undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley. Some of his lectures are available to the public as podcasts[13] and video streams (Python class) [14]

References

1. Frederic, Lardinois (November 2016). "GE acquires Wise.io to deepen its machine learning stack". Techcrunch.
2. Wong, Kathleen (February 2008). "Tracking Space Transients". ScienceMatters@Berkeley. Berkeley, California. Archived from the original on July 19, 2011.
3. Bloom, Joshua (2011). What Are Gamma-Ray Bursts?. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-14557-0.
4. "Gamma-ray Bursts, Special Topics Interview". Thomson Reuters ScienceWatch. August 2009. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
5. "Refereed articles of Joshua Bloom". Retrieved January 4, 2011.
6. "PAIRITEL, Robotic Telescope for the 21st century". Archived from the original on January 5, 2011. Retrieved January 4, 2011.
7. "SASIR". Archived from the original on February 7, 2011. Retrieved January 4, 2011.
8. "NSF Supports UC Berkeley in Taming the Data Deluge in Astronomy". Retrieved January 4, 2011.
9. Mike, Wall (October 11, 2010). "Astronomy Overload: Scientists Shifting From Stargazing to Data Mining". Space.com.
10. Joshua S. Bloom; et al. (March 30, 2011). "GRB 110328A / Swift J164449.3+573451: X-ray analysis and a mini-blazar analogy". GCN Circulars 11847 (30 March 2011).
11. "National magazines tout two chemists and two astronomers as top innovators in their fields" Archived June 13, 2011, at the Wayback Machine, University of California Newsroom, Berkeley, CA, August 22, 2008.
12. "Sophie and Tycho Brahe Programme". Archived from the original on January 6, 2013. Retrieved January 4, 2011.
13. "Astro 10P Introduction to General Astronomy". Retrieved January 4, 2011.
14. "AY250: Python computing for physical science". Archived from the original on March 16, 2016. Retrieved February 21, 2012.

External links

• Joshua Bloom homepage