Howard Hui at the Geographic South Pole

About Me

I am a research scientist with the Observational Cosmology Group at Caltech, a research affiliate at NASA JPL, and an affiliate of the Keck Institute for Space Studies. I earned my Ph.D. in Physics from Caltech in 2018 under Professor Jamie Bock.

I build and calibrate instruments for cosmology, from the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background to the near-infrared background light from galaxies. My work covers the full life of an instrument: superconducting detector development, receiver design and integration, field deployment (including four seasons at the South Pole), and the in-flight calibration and systematics analysis that set what a survey can measure.

Today I am the instrument calibration scientist for NASA's SPHEREx mission and lead the Caltech instrument team for the BICEP program. I organized the Line Intensity Mapping 2026 conference and serve on the LIM conference series scientific organizing committee.

My CV and contact information are available here. Outside of work, I enjoy exploring nature around the world.

What I Work On

SPHEREx spacecraft

SPHEREx

A NASA satellite mapping the entire sky in 102 infrared colors. I led the telescope's calibration and in-orbit commissioning, and now lead instrument systematics for extragalactic background light science — including the first SPHEREx measurements of atmospheric airglow and a new zodiacal light model built from the survey itself.

BICEP telescope at the South Pole

BICEP / Keck Array

Telescopes at the South Pole searching for the signature of cosmic inflation in the CMB. I led the design of the BICEP3 receiver and the BICEP3 analysis in the BK18 result — the best constraint on inflation to date (r < 0.036) — and now lead the Caltech instrument team.

Superconducting TES detector

Superconducting Detectors

Sensors that operate a fraction of a degree above absolute zero. I have built transition-edge sensors from CMB focal planes to far-infrared bolometers with noise below 2×10−19 W/√Hz, and I am developing AlMn TES arrays for CMB-S4 prototype focal planes and thermal kinetic inductance detectors (TKIDs).

Schedule

Below is my schedule at Caltech and JPL if you want to find a time to meet.

Caltech Calendar

JPL Calendar