News from the Chair

Darcy Barron has joined the Department of Physics and Astronomy as an assistant professor. Barron comes to UNM from University of California, Berkeley where she has been a postdoctoral scholar since 2015.

Barron earned her Ph.D. in physics at University of California, San Diego.

Barron's research involves studying cosmic inflation and large scale structure, and the polarization of the cosmic microwave background. She is a member of the POLARBEAR team, using microwave detectors mounted on the Huan Tran Telescope in Chile's Atacama Desert to interpret the polarization pattern of the microwave background. This maps the distribution of matter back to a time of the universe's inflationary period - 380,000 years after the Big Bang.

She is also the academic coordinator of the ASSURE REU program, an NSF-funded REU program based at UC Berkeley Space Science Lab.

Her website is darcybarron.com. Welcome, Dr. Barron!