NANTUCKET, MA—The Nantucket Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) announces that it will host Tanveer Karim as a featured presenter for its Science Speaker Series. His presentation, “Measuring the Growth of the Universe with Multiple Datasets,” will take place on July 5 at 7pm. It will be presented in-person at the MMA Research Center at 2 Vestal Street and via Zoom. This event is free to all.

How the largest structures in the Universe grew from the beginning of time to what we see today is a major puzzle in understanding the evolution of our Universe. Recent studies that measure the growth of structure in our Universe appear to disagree with each other depending on whether the data was obtained from the very early Universe or the more recent Universe. In this talk, Tanveer Karim will contextualize this emerging and exciting, yet puzzling, anomaly seen in cosmological datasets and what it may suggest about our Universe. Additionally, Karim will share a new measurement that hopes to shed light into this anomaly using multiple datasets. Finally, he will expand on how the ongoing and future cosmological surveys can potentially resolve this anomaly and paint a comprehensive picture of the evolution of the Universe.

A 2016 Maria Mitchell Association (MMA) National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates intern in the MMA Astronomy Department, Tanveer Karim is currently a visiting postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian and will be starting as a Faculty of Arts & Sciences Fellow and a Dunlap Fellow at the University of Toronto in the fall of 2023. He recently defended his Ph.D. from Harvard University and prior to that obtained his B.S. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Rochester. His area of specialization is Observational Cosmology, and he has been involved with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration since the beginning of his graduate school career. Outside of research, he enjoys the outdoors, reading, and learning languages.

The Maria Mitchell Association was founded in 1902 to preserve the legacy of Nantucket native astronomer, naturalist, librarian, and educator, Maria Mitchell. After she discovered a comet in 1847, Mitchell’s international fame led to many achievements and awards, including an appointment as the first female professor of astronomy at Vassar College. Maria Mitchell believed in “learning by doing” and today that philosophy is reflected in the MMA’s mission statement, programs, research projects, and other activities. The Maria Mitchell Association operates two observatories, a natural science museum, an aquarium, a research center, and preserves the historic birthplace of Maria Mitchell. A wide variety of science and history-related programming is offered throughout the year for people of all ages.

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For Immediate Release

June 26, 2023

Contact: Grace Baisley

marketinginterns@mariamitchell.org