Omid Noroozian
About
Dr. Noroozian is a civil servant electro-optical detectors systems engineer in the Detector Systems branch (code 553) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. His research is centered around developing low-noise electro-optical instrumentation and detector technologies for astrophysics and remote sensing applications such as observations from space or balloon-based platforms. Technologies include ultrasensitive superconducting detectors and receivers (Kinetic Inductance Detectors, Transition-Edge Sensors, Bolometers, x-ray/gamma-ray calorimeters), low-temperature electronic readout and multiplexing circuits for scaling detector arrays, on-chip photonic spectrometers for mid-IR/far-IR/sub-mm integral field spectroscopy, heterodyne receivers, quantum-limited wide-band amplifiers.
Dr. Noroozian earned his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Sharif University of Technology in 2004, and his M.Sc. degree in Microelectronics from the Delft University of Technology in 2006, where he worked with Prof. Teun Klapwijk on superconducting tunnel-junction (SIS) mixer receivers for the ALMA telescope (600-720 GHz). In 2009 he received an M.S. degree in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and in 2012 his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering working with Prof. Jonas Zmuidzinas (Chief Technologist at NASA/JPL), and the submillimeter-wave astrophysics group at Caltech. For his doctoral dissertation, conducted in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, he developed a first-of-a-kind submillimeter-wave imaging array using superconducting Kinetic Inductance Detectors (KIDs), and together with a team demonstrated first-light observations using MUSIC, the MUltiwavelength Sub/millimeter Inductance Camera, at the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory in Hawaii.
He continued as a postdoctoral associate at the Quantum Sensors Group at NIST and as research faculty at CU Boulder from 2012–13. There he led the development of a high-resolution cryogenic x-ray/gamma-ray spectrometer for elemental assay and demonstrated a prototype electronic readout circuit, called the superconducting microwave SQUID multiplexer, that has enabled the continued scaling of Transition-Edge Sensor (TES) bolometer arrays today. In 2013 he joined the Observational Cosmology Laboratory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) fellow with Dr. Harvey Moseley, and from 2015–17 he continued as a Research Scientist at the same institution. There he developed instrumentation and detector arrays for space telescopes including a one-of-a-kind submillimeter spectrometer chip for integral field spectroscopy called µ-Spec. From 2017–2019 he was an Associate Scientist and Research Engineer at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), where he led the establishment of a new modern research laboratory for the development of next-generation superconducting low-noise receiver technologies for NRAO’s ground-based and NASA’s space-based telescopes. These include wide-band quantum-noise-limited high-frequency superconducting parametric amplifiers for ALMA’s receiver front-ends and single-photon detectors for submillimeter/THz spectroscopy in space. In 2017 Dr. Noroozian received the Roman Technology Fellowship award from NASA to support his technological research activities aimed at NASA’s future telescope concept missions such as the Origins Space Telescope, Lynx, HabEx, and LUVOIR.
In 2019, Dr. Noroozian became a civil servant research engineer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, where he currently leads projects in the above areas and has collaborations with national and international institutions including Caltech/JPL, SRON, TU-Delft, GSFC, UC Berkeley, UVA, JHU, NIST, and UMD.