Katie Bouman Explained

Birth Name:Katherine Louise Bouman
Nationality:American
Thesis Title:Extreme Imaging via Physical Model Inversion: Seeing Around Corners and Imaging Black Holes
Thesis Url:https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/113998
Thesis Year:2017
Doctoral Advisor:William T. Freeman
Known For:CHIRP algorithm

Katherine Louise Bouman (; born 1989) is an American engineer and computer scientist working in the field of computational imaging. She led the development of an algorithm for imaging black holes, known as Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors (CHIRP), and was a member of the Event Horizon Telescope team that captured the first image of a black hole.[1] [2]

The California Institute of Technology, which hired Bouman as an assistant professor in June 2019, awarded her a named professorship in 2020.[3] [4] In 2021, asteroid 291387 Katiebouman was after her. In 2024, she became an associate professor.

Early life and education

Bouman grew up in West Lafayette, Indiana. Her father, Charles Bouman, is a professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering at Purdue University.[5]

As a high school student, Bouman conducted imaging research at Purdue University. She graduated from West Lafayette Junior-Senior High School in 2007.[5]

Bouman studied electrical engineering at the University of Michigan and graduated summa cum laude in 2011. She earned her master's degree in 2013 and obtained a doctoral degree in electrical engineering and computer science in 2017 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).[6]

At MIT, she was a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[7] [8] This group also worked closely with MIT's Haystack Observatory and with the Event Horizon Telescope.[9] [10] She was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. Her master's thesis, Estimating Material Properties of Fabric through the Observation of Motion,[11] was awarded the Ernst Guillemin Award for best Master's Thesis in electrical engineering.[12] Her Ph.D. dissertation, Extreme imaging via physical model inversion: seeing around corners and imaging black holes, was supervised by William T. Freeman. Prior to receiving her doctoral degree, Bouman delivered a TEDx talk, How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole, which explained algorithms that could be used to capture the first image of a black hole.[13] [14] [15]

Research and career

After earning her doctorate, Bouman joined Harvard University as a postdoctoral fellow on the Event Horizon Telescope Imaging team.[16] [17] [18]

Bouman joined Event Horizon Telescope project in 2013.[19] She led the development of an algorithm for imaging black holes, known as Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors (CHIRP).[15] [20] [21] CHIRP inspired image validation procedures used in acquiring the first image of a black hole in April 2019,[22] and Bouman played a significant role in the project[23] [24] by verifying images, selecting parameters for filtering images taken by the Event Horizon Telescope,[25] and participating in the development of a robust imaging framework that compared the results of different image reconstruction techniques.[26] Her group is analyzing the Event Horizon Telescope's images to learn more about general relativity in a strong gravitational field.[27]

Bouman received significant media attention after a photo, showing her reaction to the detection of the black hole shadow in the EHT images, went viral.[23] [28] [29] [30] Some people in the media and on the Internet misleadingly implied that Bouman was a "lone genius" behind the image.[31] However, Bouman herself repeatedly noted that the result came from the work of a large collaboration, showing the importance of teamwork in science.[32] [33] Bouman also became the target of online harassment, to the extent that her colleague Andrew Chael made a statement on Twitter criticizing "awful and sexist attacks on my colleague and friend", including attempts to undermine her contributions by crediting him solely with work accomplished by the team.[34] [35]

Bouman joined the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as an assistant professor in June 2019, where she works on new systems for computational imaging using computer vision and machine learning.[36] [37] She is now an associate professor of computing and mathematical sciences, electrical engineering and astronomy as well as a Rosenberg Scholar.[38] Bouman received a named professorship at Caltech in 2020. In 2021, Bouman was awarded the Royal Photographic Society Progress Medal and Honorary Fellowship.[39]

Recognition

She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2019.[40]

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Anon. The woman behind first black hole image. April 11, 2019. bbc.co.uk. BBC News.
  2. (April 2019) Focus on the First Event Horizon Telescope Results — the series of articles in The Astrophysical Journal Letters which report the EHT results.
  3. Web site: April 11, 2019. Katie Bouman Joins EAS and CMS. April 11, 2019. cms.caltech.edu. January 12, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210112111539/https://cms.caltech.edu/news/1190. dead.
  4. Web site: Stevens. Chester. October 9, 2020. Caltech Faculty Receive Named Professorships. November 19, 2020. Caltech.
  5. Web site: Bangert. Dave. April 10, 2019. That first-ever black hole picture? A West Lafayette grad played a big part. April 10, 2019. Journal & Courier. en. Lafayette.
  6. Web site: Katie Bouman aka Katherine L. Bouman. January 13, 2021. users.cms.caltech.edu.
  7. Web site: Hardesty. Larry. June 6, 2016. A method to image black holes. November 19, 2020. MIT News Massachusetts Institute of Technology. en.
  8. Extreme imaging via physical model inversion : seeing around corners and imaging black holes. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 2017. Ph.D.. Katherine L.. Bouman. 1721.1/113998.
  9. Web site: Chu. Jennifer. April 10, 2019. Working together as a 'virtual telescope,' observatories around the world produce first direct images of a black hole. April 10, 2019. news.mit.edu. MIT News.
  10. Book: Fletcher, Seth . Einstein's shadow : a black hole, a band of astronomers, and the quest to see the unseeable . Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers . New York, NY . 2018 . 978-0-06-231202-0 . 1055204305 . 140.
  11. 1721.1/84905 . S.M. . Katherine Louise . Bouman . Estimating the material properties of fabric through the observation of motion. 2013. Massachusetts Institute of Technology . 868903611.
  12. Web site: November 18, 2014. EECS Celebrates – Fall 2014 Awards MIT EECS. April 10, 2019. www.eecs.mit.edu. May 13, 2019. https://web.archive.org/web/20190513083023/https://www.eecs.mit.edu/news-events/announcements/eecs-celebrates-fall-2014-awards. dead.
  13. Web site: Katie Bouman Speaker TED . Bouman . Katie . www.ted.com . en . April 10, 2019.
  14. News: Guarino . Ben . Algorithms gave us the black hole picture. She's the 29-year-old scientist who helped create them . April 16, 2019 . The Washington Post . April 10, 2019.
  15. News: Chappel. Bill. April 10, 2019. Earth Sees First Image Of A Black Hole. NPR. April 10, 2019. Some of that work took place in Massachusetts, at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, where computer scientist Katie Bouman 'led the creation of a new algorithm to produce the first-ever image of a black hole,' the lab said Wednesday..
  16. Web site: Katie Bouman . bhi.fas.harvard.edu . en . April 10, 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190410193908/https://bhi.fas.harvard.edu/people/katie-bouman . April 10, 2019 . dead .
  17. Web site: Professor Katie Bouman (Caltech): " Imaging a Black Hole with the Event Horizon Telescope" . en-US . April 10, 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190410171710/https://scien.stanford.edu/index.php/professor-katie-bouman-caltech-imaging-a-black-hole-with-the-event-horizon-telescope/ . April 10, 2019 . dead .
  18. Web site: Project bids to make black hole movies . February 16, 2017 . BBC News . en-GB. April 10, 2019.
  19. News: Katie Bouman: the 29-year-old whose work led to first black hole photo. Ellis-Petersen. Hannah. April 11, 2019. The Guardian. May 9, 2019. en-GB. 0261-3077.
  20. Book: Bouman. Katherine L.. Johnson. Michael D.. Zoran. Daniel. Fish. Vincent L.. Doeleman. Sheperd S.. Freeman. William T.. 2016 IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). Computational Imaging for VLBI Image Reconstruction. 2016. 913–922. 10.1109/CVPR.2016.105 . 1721.1/103077. 1512.01413. 978-1-4673-8851-1. 9085016.
  21. Web site: Scientist superstar Katie Bouman designed algorithm for black hole image . April 11, 2019 . phys.org . April 12, 2019.
  22. MIT_CSAIL . 1116775692014882817 . April 12, 2019. Clarification .
  23. News: How Katie Bouman Accidentally Became the Face of the Black Hole Project. Mervosh. Sarah. April 11, 2019. The New York Times. April 12, 2019.
  24. News: Trolls hijacked a scientist's image to attack Katie Bouman. They picked the wrong astrophysicist.. Elfrink. Tim. Washington Post. April 12, 2019. April 12, 2019.
  25. Web site: That image of a black hole you saw everywhere today? Thank this grad student for making it possible . Lou . Michelle . Ahmed . Saeed . April 10, 2019 . cnn.com. CNN. April 10, 2019.
  26. Chael . Andrew . thisgreyspirit . 1116518547327475712 . April 11, 2019 . (3/7) the work of many others who wrote code, debugged, and figured out how to use the code on challenging EHT data. With a few others, Katie also developed the imaging framework that rigorously tested all three codes and shaped the entire paper (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/2041-8213/ab0e85); . May 9, 2019.
  27. Web site: Katherine L. (Katie) Bouman . caltech.edu . California Institute of Technology . April 10, 2019.
  28. News: Ellis-Petersen . Hannah . Katie Bouman: the 29-year-old whose work led to first black hole photo . April 13, 2019 . The Guardian . April 11, 2019.
  29. News: To undermine Katherine Bouman's role in the black hole photo, trolls held up a white man as the real hero – until he fought back . . Lou . Michelle . Ahmed . Saeed . April 12, 2019 . April 13, 2019.
  30. News: The first picture of a black hole made Katie Bouman an overnight celebrity. Then internet trolls descended . Collins . Ben . . April 12, 2019 . April 13, 2019.
  31. Web site: The Dark Saga of Katie Bouman. Koren. Marina. The Atlantic. April 15, 2019. May 12, 2019.
  32. Web site: We Should Listen To Katie Bouman: Science Takes Teamwork . Smith . Kiona N. . Forbes . One section of the internet made Bouman a figurehead without her consent and often over her own protests, while another section subjected her to harassment and virulent backlash. . April 14, 2019 . April 22, 2019.
  33. News: Perkins. Robert. April 15, 2019. How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole. Caltech News. April 22, 2019.
  34. News: Griggs . Mary Beth . Online trolls are harassing a scientist who helped take the first picture of a black hole . April 14, 2019 . The Verge . April 13, 2019.
  35. Web site: Internet trolls attempted to discredit Katie Bouman's work on black hole project. Joyce. Kathleen. April 13, 2019. Fox News. en-US. April 14, 2019.
  36. Web site: Imaging the Invisible . www.ee.columbia.edu . en . April 10, 2019 . May 13, 2019 . https://web.archive.org/web/20190513062510/http://www.ee.columbia.edu/imaging-invisible . dead .
  37. Web site: Perkins. Robert. July 2, 2019. Seeing Farther and Deeper: An Interview with Katie Bouman. January 13, 2021. Caltech.
  38. Web site: Caltech Computing + Mathematical Sciences Katherine L. Bouman. November 19, 2020. Caltech Computing + Mathematical Sciences. en.
  39. Web site: Morgan . Kathleen . Katie Bouman: beyond the black hole . RPS . Royal Photographic Society . December 1, 2021. January 7, 2022. Just as your brain may be able to recognise a song being played on a broken piano if there's enough functioning keys, we can design algorithms to intelligently fill in the EHT's missing information and reveal the underlying black hole image.
  40. 2022-12-17. 2019-10-15. BBC News. en-GB. BBC 100 Women 2019: Who is on the list this year?.

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