At MIT, she was a member of the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).[10][11] This group also worked closely with MIT's Haystack Observatory and with the Event Horizon Telescope.[12][13] She was supported by a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship. Her master's thesis, Estimating Material Properties of Fabric through the Observation of Motion,[14] was awarded the Ernst Guillemin Award for best Master's Thesis in electrical engineering.[15] Her Ph.D. dissertation, Extreme imaging via physical model inversion: seeing around corners and imaging black holes, was supervised by William T. Freeman.[11] Prior to receiving her doctoral degree, Bouman delivered a TEDx talk, How to Take a Picture of a Black Hole, which explained algorithms that could be used to capture the first image of a black hole.[1][16][17]
The first direct image of a black hole, imaged by the Event Horizon Telescope and published in April 2019
Bouman joined Event Horizon Telescope project in 2013.[21] She led the development of an algorithm for imaging black holes, known as Continuous High-resolution Image Reconstruction using Patch priors (CHIRP).[17][22][23] CHIRP inspired image validation procedures used in acquiring the first image of a black hole in April 2019,[24] and Bouman played a significant role in the project[2][25] by verifying images, selecting parameters for filtering images taken by the Event Horizon Telescope,[26] and participating in the development of a robust imaging framework that compared the results of different image reconstruction techniques.[27] Her group is analyzing the Event Horizon Telescope's images to learn more about general relativity in a strong gravitational field.[28]
Bouman received significant media attention after a photo, showing her reaction to the detection of the black hole shadow in the EHT images, went viral.[2][29][30][31] Some people in the media and on the Internet misleadingly implied that Bouman was a "lone genius" behind the image.[32][33] However, Bouman herself repeatedly noted that the result came from the work of a large collaboration, showing the importance of teamwork in science.[2][33][34] Bouman also became the target of online harassment, to the extent that her colleague Andrew Chael made a statement on Twitter criticizing "awful and sexist attacks on my colleague and friend", including attempts to undermine her contributions by crediting him solely with work accomplished by the team.[25][27][35][36]
Bouman joined the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as an assistant professor in June 2019, where she works on new systems for computational imaging using computer vision and machine learning.[28][37][38] She is now an associate professor of computing and mathematical sciences, electrical engineering and astronomy as well as a Rosenberg Scholar.[39] Bouman received a named professorship at Caltech in 2020.[6] In 2021, Bouman was awarded the Royal Photographic Society Progress Medal and Honorary Fellowship.[40]
^Fletcher, Seth (2018). Einstein's shadow : a black hole, a band of astronomers, and the quest to see the unseeable. New York, NY: Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. p. 140. ISBN978-0-06-231202-0. OCLC1055204305.
^Bouman, Katherine Louise (2013). Estimating the material properties of fabric through the observation of motion (S.M. thesis). Massachusetts Institute of Technology. hdl:1721.1/84905. OCLC868903611.
^ abChappel, Bill (April 10, 2019). "Earth Sees First Image Of A Black Hole". NPR. Retrieved April 10, 2019. Some of that work took place in Massachusetts, at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab, where computer scientist Katie Bouman 'led the creation of a new algorithm to produce the first-ever image of a black hole,' the lab said Wednesday.
^"Katie Bouman". bhi.fas.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on April 10, 2019. Retrieved April 10, 2019.
^ abSmith, Kiona N. (April 14, 2019). "We Should Listen To Katie Bouman: Science Takes Teamwork". Forbes. Retrieved April 22, 2019. One section of the internet made Bouman a figurehead without her consent and often over her own protests, while another section subjected her to harassment and virulent backlash.
^Morgan, Kathleen (December 1, 2021). "Katie Bouman: beyond the black hole". RPS. Royal Photographic Society. Retrieved January 7, 2022. Just as your brain may be able to recognise a song being played on a broken piano if there's enough functioning keys, we can design algorithms to intelligently fill in the EHT's missing information and reveal the underlying black hole image
