Academic

Research Summary

I have been a Ph.D. student at Princeton University since 2004, when I graduated with an Hon. BSc. in Physics & Astronomy from the University of Toronto.

My advisor at Princeton is Lyman Page, and I also work closely with Suzanne Staggs and Joe Fowler. We are working on the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), a project to measure the cosmic microwave background — the oldest light in the universe — at unprecedented resolution and sensitivity. The ACT was installed on Cerro Toco in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile in March of 2007. I have worked on many aspects of this experiment: detector characterisation, data acquisition software and hardware, motion control, mirror panel alignment, analysis software and pumping diesel by hand from two-hundred litre barrels in a pickup truck into our generators.

In the past, I've worked with Barth Netterfield at the University of Toronto on BLAST, a balloon-borne telescope for making sub-millimetre observations of distant galaxies and closer, star forming regions. I also worked on a theoretical project studying the topology of the universe with Dick Bond and Carlo Contaldi at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA).

Academic Pages

Chile Journal — A journal I keep when working on ACT in Chile

CV — Curriculum Vitae Adae Hincks

ACTexperiment.info — The webserver for the ACT network.

ACT — The public ACT website.

AEPHEM — An astronomical ephemeris and reduction C library that I wrote.

ACT T-Shirts — Awesome t-shirts designed by me and by brother.

Generals Solutions — Some solutions to departmental generals exams from 2000-2005. Password needed.

Dodelson Solutions — Selected solutions to problems from Dodelson's Modern Cosmology. Password needed (after some pesky students in Spain started plagiarising my answers).

Personal

Sound Advice

We must love them both, those who opinions we share and those whose opinions we reject. Both have laboured in the search for truth and both have helped us in the finding of it. — St. Thomas Aquinas

Pages That Change

Book Notes — A page of thoughts on books just after I have read them. (Most recent: Silence.)

Photo Gallery — Some of my photos are posted here, but most of my galleries aren't online because of their large sizes. Also, the "Full Size" images aren't included to save space. (Note that these are on a different server (wwwphy.princeton.edu) to enable the PHP scripts.)

Rectification of Names — Words that I think are misused, or are used so vaguely as to make them practically useless.

Pages That Stay The Same

Science vs. Religion — A lengthy and deeply considered meditation.

St. Thomas `The Man' Aquinas — Is St. Thomas rightly called `The Man'?

Titular Conventions — Some thoughts on titulature by Dr. Toporoski.

Animated Adventures of Strongbad — Stop motion animation inspired by, but far surpassing, my brother's.

The Anti-Adam — One popular link on my website has been the link to the Anti-Adam, a fellow in England whose website always used to beat mine in google searches until it was taken down. Fortunately, I made sure to keep a cached copy for posterity.

Links

www.AfricaFiles.org — I used to be the webtender for this webpage. My dad co-edits the At Issue Ezine section.

Ion Rules — My brother's page of awesomeness. Check it out its majesty.

Dentonia Park Tennis Club — The tennis club I used to belong to in Toronto. My friend Jack Lenartowicz (and sometime doubles partner) looks after the webpage.

Visual Evolution — Some interesting photographic editing by (the above mentioned) Jack Lenartowicz.

Morning Internet Routine

Aljazeera News — While the BBC is still an excellent news source, I find Aljazeera more tempered, less frenetic and very well written. Internation coverage is superb.

CBC News — For news from the True North, Strong and Free.

Millinerd — Frequent and intelligent ruminations on divers topics by a fellow graduate student at Princeton.

All Manner of Thing — My friend Craig Burrell's excellent website, with, among other things, frequent notes on what he has been reading.

The Hinckster — My sister's ironically titled "nerd blog": always entertaining; plus you can build your vocabulary as she invents helpful new words.

Whispers in the Loggia — Extremely informative; refreshingly balanced.