Alex Filippenko is a Professor of Astronomy, and the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor in the Physical Sciences, at the University of California, Berkeley. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of California, Santa Barbara (1979) and his doctorate from the California Institute of Technology (1984). His primary areas of research are exploding stars, gamma-ray bursts, active galaxies, black holes, and observational cosmology. Filippenko was the only person to have been a member of both teams that revealed the Nobel-worthy accelerating expansion of the Universe. He is one of the world's most highly cited astronomers and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences (2009). Filippenko has won many prestigious teaching awards, including the Carnegie/CASE National Professor of the Year among doctoral institutions (2006). He has appeared frequently on science newscasts and television documentaries, especially The Universe series. He received the Carl Sagan Prize for Science Popularization (2004).
