Walter loeb biography

Loeb is the Frank B. BAIRD Jr. Professor of Science at Harvard University. He serves as Chair of the Harvard Astronomy department (since 2011), Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot project â€" which aims to launch lightweight spacecraft towards the nearest stars using a powerful laser (since 2016), founding director of Harvard's Black Hole Initiative â€" the first interdisciplinary center worldwide dedicated to the study of black holes (since 2016), and director of the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) (since 2007) within the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.

LOEB is an elected fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Physical Society, and the International Academy of Astronautics. As of July 2018, he was appointed as chair of the Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA)