Rate My Professor Mark Devlin

Mark Devlin is the Reese W. Flower Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pennsylvania. He earned a B.A. in physics and mathematics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1988 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley in 1993. Following postdoctoral research at Princeton University and the University of California, Berkeley, he joined the University of Pennsylvania faculty in 1996 as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor in 2000, and appointed to the Reese W. Flower Professorship in 2007. His research focuses on experimental cosmology at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths, involving the design and construction of sophisticated instrumentation and telescopes for observations from high-altitude balloons and sites in Chile. He has led or co-led major projects including the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope (BLAST), the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), and the Simons Observatory, where he serves as Co-Director. Devlin has received numerous honors, including election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2025, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award, the Ira H. Abrams Award for Distinguished Teaching, the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching, and the Dean’s Award for Undergraduate Research Mentoring at the University of Pennsylvania. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and has contributed to key publications on cosmic microwave background observations and the cosmic infrared background.