Joaquin Vieira, Assistant Professor of Astronomy and of Physics and leader of the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at Illinois, has been named to the Science and Technology Definition Team for NASA's upcoming Far Infrared (IR) Surveyor mission.

The Far IR Surveyor is one of four flagship astronomy missions that NASA has selected for inclusion in the 2020 Decadal Survey of Astronomy Research, which will set the "roadmap" for astronomical research and technology development from 2020 to 2030. NASA has selected four missions to include in the 2020 Decadal Survey: a Far IR Surveyor, a Habitable-Exoplanet Imaging Mission (HabEx), an Ultra-Violet/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR) and an X-ray Surveyor. The mission of the Far IR Surveyor will be “to study the evolution of galaxies, formation of stars, and growth of black holes, as well as the evolution from primordial gas in the universe to habitable planets.”

Professor Vieira is an observational cosmologist who works across the electromagnetic spectrum. His scientific interests include: galaxy evolution and structure formation at high redshift; the star formation history of the Universe; the epoch of reionization; the cosmic microwave background. He builds experiments, conducts cosmological surveys, and performs followup observations of distant galaxies. He works with data from the South Pole Telescope, Herschel, Hubble, Spitzer, and ALMA. He is currently helping to build future mm and sub-millimeter facilities and pondering the cosmic evolution of dust and ionized carbon.