Benjamin Mazin

Biography

Professor Mazin attended Yale University, graduating in 1997. He then attended the California Institute of Technology, graduating with a doctorate in Astrophysics in August, 2004. After a short post-doc at Caltech, he went to work as a scientist at JPL in March, 2005. He joined the faculty at the University of California Santa Barbara in September, 2008, where he leads a lab dedicated to the development of optical/UV/X-ray Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) and astronomical instrumentation for time and energy resolved studies. His current research focus is building and using MKID-based instruments for detecting and characterizing nearby exoplanets. He was awarded the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2010, and the Worster Chair in Experimental Physics in 2017.

Research

Mazin Lab, led by Professor Ben Mazin, is a part of the Department of Physics at UCSB. We are focused on using a unique detector technology called Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors (MKIDs) for astronomy in the near infrared, optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray. MKIDs allow us to determine the energy and arrival time of individual photons without read noise or dark current. The applications of this technology spans a wide range of vital research areas, including detecting Earth-like planets around nearby stars, untangling the emission mechanisms of pulsars, determining the redshift of billions of galaxies, and detecting dark matter.