Kevin Schawinski (April 28, 1981 in

Zürich Zürich () is the list of cities in Switzerland, largest city in Switzerland and the capital of the canton of Zürich. It is located in north-central Switzerland, at the northwestern tip of Lake Zürich. As of January 2020, the municipality has 43 ...

) is a

Swiss Swiss may refer to: * the adjectival form of Switzerland * Swiss people Places * Swiss, Missouri * Swiss, North Carolina *Swiss, West Virginia * Swiss, Wisconsin Other uses *Swiss-system tournament, in various games and sports *Swiss Internation ...

astrophysicist. He was a professor at

ETH Zurich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

(the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology) in

Early life

Kevin Schawinski grew up in both Switzerland and

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. His father is Swiss media entrepreneur Roger Schawinski.

Education

Kevin Schawinski graduated from

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to teach an ...

in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

in 2004 with degrees in both

physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge which r ...

and

mathematics Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...

. Following that, he went to the

University of Oxford , mottoeng = The Lord is my light , established = , endowment = £6.1 billion (including colleges) (2019) , budget = £2.145 billion (2019–20) , chancellor ...

, where he was a fellow at Christ Church College and later the "Henry Skynner Junior Research Fellow" at

Balliol College Balliol College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. One of Oxford's oldest colleges, it was founded around 1263 by John I de Balliol, a landowner from Barnard Castle in County Durham, who provided the ...

. He was awarded the

Royal Astronomical Society (Whatever shines should be observed) , predecessor = , successor = , formation = , founder = , extinction = , merger = , merged = , type = NGO ...

's 2008 Michael Penston Prize for his doctoral thesis "The Star Formation History of Early-type Galaxies". He received his D.Phil. in 2008. While a graduate student at Oxford, Schawinski founded the

citizen science Citizen science (CS) (similar to community science, crowd science, crowd-sourced science, civic science, participatory monitoring, or volunteer monitoring) is scientific research conducted with participation from the public (who are sometimes re ...

project

Galaxy Zoo Galaxy Zoo is a crowdsourced astronomy project which invites people to assist in the morphological classification of large numbers of galaxies. It is an example of citizen science as it enlists the help of members of the public to help in scien ...

along with researcher

Chris Lintott Christopher John Lintott (born 26 November 1980) is a British astrophysicist, author and broadcaster. He is a Professor of Astrophysics in the Department of Physics at the University of Oxford. Lintott is involved in a number of popular scie ...

, which later became the

Zooniverse Zooniverse is a citizen science web portal owned and operated by the Citizen Science Alliance. It is home to some of the Internet's largest, most popular and most successful citizen science projects. The organization grew from the original Gal ...

Career

From 2008 to 2012, Schawinski was a postdoctoral research associate at

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

and in 2009 became a NASA Einstein Fellow. His research at Yale included studies of

black hole A black hole is a region of spacetime where gravitation, gravity is so strong that nothing, including light or other Electromagnetic radiation, electromagnetic waves, has enough energy to escape it. The theory of general relativity predicts t ...

galaxy A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...

formation, and co-founding the citizen science project

Planet Hunters Planet Hunters is a citizen science project to find exoplanets using human eyes. It does this by having users analyze data from the NASA Kepler space telescope and the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. It was launched by a team led by ...

. In 2012, he became a professor in the Institute for Astronomy at

ETH Zürich (colloquially) , former_name = eidgenössische polytechnische Schule , image = ETHZ.JPG , image_size = , established = , type = Public , budget = CHF 1.896 billion (2021) , rector = Günther Dissertori , president = Joël Mesot , ac ...

Switzerland ). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...

. He is the secretary of the Swiss Society of Astrophysics and Astronomy, the professional society of astronomers in Switzerland. The

Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute The Gottlieb Duttweiler Institute (GDI) is an independent think-tank and the oldest organisation of its kind in Switzerland. It is located in Rüschlikon, near Zurich. The GDI is located on the edge of the Park im Grüene. Established on 1 ...

named him one of the "Thought Leaders" of Switzerland in 2016. In 2017, he was awarded the

European Astronomical Society The European Astronomical Society (EAS) is a learned society, founded under the Swiss Civil Code in 1990, as an association to contribute and promote the advancement of astronomy in Europe, and to deal with astronomical matters at a European lev ...

's MERAC Prize as the best junior researcher in observational astrophysics. In 2017, he launched the Space.ml platform with Ce Zhang to apply

artificial intelligence Artificial intelligence (AI) is intelligence—perceiving, synthesizing, and inferring information—demonstrated by machines, as opposed to intelligence displayed by animals and humans. Example tasks in which this is done include speech re ...

to astrophysics research. Together with colleagues from

and the

University of Zurich The University of Zürich (UZH, german: Universität Zürich) is a public research university located in the city of Zürich, Switzerland. It is the largest university in Switzerland, with its 28,000 enrolled students. It was founded in 1833 f ...

, he founded the Citizen Science Center Zurich. Schawinski is the CEO of Modulos AI, a company which is dedicated to bringing Artificial Intelligence to the "right level of abstraction"" In 2020, Schawniski discussed the future of Modulos with

Guy Spier Guy Spier (born February 4, 1966) is a Zurich-based investor. He is the author of ''The Education of a Value Investor''. Spier is the manager of the Aquamarine Fund with $350 million in assets. He is well known for bidding US$650,100 with Mohni ...

Research

Schawinski has worked on a range of topics from galaxy evolution, black hole astrophysics, citizen science and artificial intelligence. He has published over 200 peer reviewed articles, including 6 in

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physics, physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomenon, phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. ...

and

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence for ...

. His publications have been cited over 16,000 times.

References

External links