Jason Rhodes ’94 recently received the 2007 Lew Allen Award for Excellence for his work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. Rhodes was honored for outstanding scientific leadership in the field of weak lensing, which enabled the first large-scale measurement of the three-dimensional distribution of dark matter in the universe.

The $25,000 research award is given annually to recognize and encourage significant individual accomplishments or leadership in scientific research or technological innovation by JPL employees during the early years of their professional careers.

Weak gravitational lensing is the slight distortion of the shapes of background galaxies by foreground dark matter. Jason, a research scientist, used this method to measure the amount and distribution of dark matter. “Using the 2 square degree Hubble Space Telescope (HST) COSMOS survey (http://cosmos.astro.caltech.edu), the largest ever survey with HST, we were able to make high resolution dark matter maps that showed dark matter forms the cosmic scaffolding upon which the luminous structures we see (galaxies, stars, etc.) form in the universe.”

His team’s work was featured on the cover of Nature magazine (Jan. 18, 2007), and the dark matter maps they released were very popular with the general public and news organizations around the world and have even shown up in the “Guinness Book of World Records” (www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic0701.html).