Rachel Bean

Senior Associate Dean for Math and Science, Jacob Gould Schurman Professor of Astronomy

612 Space Science Bldg
rachel.bean@cornell.edu
607/254-4920

Departments and programs

Astronomy
CCAPS
Physics

Affiliated Colleges

College of Arts and Sciences

Academic interests

Astrophysics, General Relativity and Cosmology

Overview

Rachel is serving as the Senior Associate Dean for Science and Math and, prior to that, in the College of Arts and Sciences she served as the Interim Dean and as the Senior Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education, overseeing admissions, advising, career development and registrar services, and the undergraduate curriculum. She has also served as the chair of the Faculty Diversity Committee and the chair of the Data Science Curriculum Committee in the College of Arts of Sciences, following which she spearheaded the introduction of a university-wide undergraduate minor in data science.

Rachel’s research is in the field of cosmology, the study of how the universe began and evolved into what we see today. Her work focuses on extracting information about cosmological theories, deciphering the properties of matter and gravity on cosmic scales and the physics of the early universe, using astrophysical observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and galaxies (large-scale structure).

She is involved in a number of astronomical experiments. These include the science teams for large-scale structure experiments: the Vera Rubin Telescope (LSST), the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and the NASA science teams for the Euclid and Roman Space Telescope missions. She is also involved in CMB/sub-millimeter experiments, including the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), the Simons Observatory, CMB-S4 and the Cornell-led Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST).

She served as the collaboration leader for the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration, an international collaboration of over 500 scientists, and as a member of the U.S. Astronomy and Astrophysics Advisory Council (AAAC), that advises NSF, NASA and the DOE on areas of mutual interest/concern.

Rachel is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE), from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and a Cottrell Scholar Award, for excellence in research and teaching. As a member of the NASA Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) science team, she was a co-recipient of the 2012 Gruber Prize and the 2018 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Rachel has been a faculty member in the Department of Astronomy at Cornell since 2005. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University. She received a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in theoretical physics from Imperial College London and a B.A. Hons. in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University.

Research Focus

Theoretical cosmology and its ties to astrophysical observations.

Publications

* indicates paper first-authored by a graduate student in Professor Bean’s research group

*C. Wilson and R. Bean, “Fisher's Mirage: Noise Tightening of Cosmological Constraints in Simulation-Based Inference”, Phys. Rev. D submitted, arXiv:2406.06067.
*L. Wenzl, R. Bean and the ACT Collaboration, “The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: DR6 Gravitational Lensing cross SDSS measurement and constraints on gravity with the EG statistic”, Phys. Rev. D submitted, arXiv:2405.12795.
*Y. Gong and R. Bean, “kSZ pairwise velocity reconstruction with machine learning”, Phys. Rev. D 109, 123525 (2024), arXiv:2403.04664.
*L. Wenzl, R. Bean et al., “Constraining gravity with a new precision EG estimator using Planck + SDSS BOSS.”, Phys. Rev. D submitted, arXiv: 2401.12971
*Y. Gong, R. Bean, P. Gallardo, E. Vavagiakis, N. Battaglia, M. Niemack, “Pairwise kSZ signal extraction efficacy and optical depth estimation”, Phys. Rev. D. 109 (2024), 023513, arXiv: 2307.11894.
*L. Wenzl, S. Chen and R. Bean, “Magnification Bias Estimators for Realistic Surveys: an Application to the BOSS Survey”, MNRAS 527 (2023) 2, 1760-1773, arXiv: 2308.05892.
*C. Wilson and R. Bean, “Challenges in Constraining Gravity with Cosmic Voids”, Phys. Rev. D 107 (2022), 124008, arXiv: 2212:02569.
*L. Wenzl, C. Doux, C. Heinrich, R. Bean, B. Jain, O. Doré, T. Eifler, X. Fang, “Cosmology with the Roman Space Telescope -- Synergies with CMB lensing”, MNRAS 512 (2022) 4, 5311, arXiv: 2112:07681.
R. Liu, *G. Valogiannis, N. Battaglia and R. Bean, “Constraints on f(R) and nDGP Modified Gravity Model Parameters with Cluster Abundances and Galaxy Clustering”, PRD 104 (2021) 10, 103519, arXiv:2101.08728.
*V. Calafut, P. A. Gallardo, E. M. Vavagiakis, S. Amodeo, et al., “The Atacama Cosmology Telescope: Detection of the Pairwise Kinematic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich Effect with SDSS DR15 Galaxies”, Phys. Rev. D 104 (2021) 4, 043502, arXiv:2101.08374.