Dr. Masao Sako

Biography

Masao Sako is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has served since 2006, transitioning from Assistant Professor to Associate Professor and then Professor. He has held prestigious postdoctoral fellowships, including a KIPAC Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Stanford University and a Chandra Postdoctoral Fellowship at the California Institute of Technology. He completed his Ph.D. in 2001 at Columbia University, where he also obtained his M.Phil. in 2000 and M.S. in 1999. Sako's research primarily focuses on observational cosmology, particularly using supernovae (SNe) to measure luminosity distances, which have shown that the Universe is dominated by an unknown component known as dark energy, causing the Universe's expansion to accelerate. His research group participates in large-scale optical surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (DES) and the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) and Roman missions, aiming to discover thousands of SNe to map the detailed expansion history of the Universe. He is also actively developing machine learning and deep learning methods to enhance data analysis in astronomy and cosmology, investigating the application of GPUs for image analysis within his research projects.

Research Interests

Experience