Nils Halverson is associate dean of graduate students and resource management, within the Division of Natural Sciences in the College of Arts and Sciences. He is also a professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences (APS), and a fellow in the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. He has been a member of the CU Boulder faculty since 2005.
As a faculty member, Halverson studies the origins and early evolution of the universe by building telescopes at the South Pole, Chile, and in space to observe the cosmic microwave background (CMB), leftover heat from the big bang. Observations of the CMB can be used to seek evidence for gravitational waves released during the Big Bang, measure the neutrino mass, and probe the evolution of structure formation in the universe.听
He has eight years of administrative experience, including six as department chair and two as director and associate director of the Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. During the 2023-24 academic year he was funded by a College Scholar Award, which he took together with a sabbatical to work on a Japanese-led space mission while living in Tokyo.