Professor Emeritus Michel (Mike) Fich of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, and Associate Member of the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics has been awarded the 2026 Dunlap Award for Innovation in Astronomical Research Tools by the Canadian Astronomical Society (CASCA).
The 2026 Dunlap award recognizes Professor Fich’s dedication to ensuring Canadian participation in, and access to, groundbreaking infrared and mm-scale astronomical instrumentation. During his career, Mike gained a reputation for seeing projects through from initial concept to realization and on to science. Mike’s vision and leadership have contributed to instruments that have been essential for many areas of astronomical research, and range from instrumentation in space, such as the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) on board the Herschel Space Observatory, to instrumentation on ground-based telescopes, such as the SCUBA-2 cameras on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), to entire observatories, such as the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST). These instruments have all had an enormous scientific impact, and it is fair to say that without Mike’s sustained efforts, several of them - in particular SCUBA-2 – may never have been built.
Mike chose a profession in radio astronomy because it allowed him to combine his hobbies of problem-solving, astronomy and computing. He spent his PhD at Berkley in the early 1980s building hardware and writing code for the Hat Creek 85 foot cm-wavelength telescope and by observational research into dark matter. He felt the culmination of that work was achieved with measurements of the rotation curve of the galaxy using CO observations and decided to pivot towards studying massive star formation. He realized that this kind of research involved large-scale instrumentation that required international collaboration to realize its aims, and that set the course for the rest of his career.
SCUBA-2
It could be said that Mike’s greatest achievements as a leader in innovative instrumentation development are perhaps demonstrated by the development and construction of SCUBA-2 on the JCMT. In the 1990s, the most scientifically useful camera on the JCMT was the Submillimetre Common-User Bolometer Array (SCUBA), which was used for mapping astronomical objects in mm/sub-mm wavelengths. As a frequent user of the JCMT, Mike was aware that the slow mapping speed of SCUBA was a major limitation of the facility. As is typical of Mike, when faced with an obstacle, he resolved to overcome it. In 2001, he gathered interested Canadian and British astronomers into a team to build a new camera, SCUBA-2. Mike led the team through applications for funding, managing several Canadian sub-teams (readout electronics, auxiliary instruments, data reduction software) and, he created and operated a SCUBA-2 detector lab at the University of Waterloo as part of the design team. He was also central to the process that created the SCUBA-2 Legacy Survey program that became the main way that SCUBA-2 was used.
SCUBA-2 began full operations in October 2011 and is still operating today. The scientific impact of SCUBA-2 is highly appreciated, especially in the Canadian Astronomical Community. As noted in “JCMT History” (Gary Davis, Director of the JAC/JCMT): SCUBA-2 was mission-critical for the JCMT: the survival of the observatory was entirely dependent on the performance of this instrument. The Canadian funding via CFI and the university consortium led by Mike Fich was a crucial contribution, without which the instrument would never have been built.
SCUBA-2 mounted on JCMT. Credit: JCMT
HIFI
Mike led the team that provided the Canadian hardware contribution to Herschel – the Local Oscillator Source Unit (LOSU) for HIFI. The LOSU provides the reference signal required for the instrument to operate properly and is required to “tune” the instrument to the correct frequency for observations . Herschel was a flagship mission for the European Space Agency, which launched in 2009 and operated until the mission ended in 2016. The HIFI instrument was used to observe many molecular species but chiefly to observe water at wavelengths that are impossible to observe from the ground due to contaminations from water in the Earth’s atmosphere. As team lead, Mike wrote many proposals to acquire and continue CSA funding for HIFI, managed the design, construction, and testing of the LOSU (primarily at ComDev, a Canadian aerospace company), managed a Canadian staff supporting the HIFI instrument, coordinated the Canadian HIFI science team, and ultimately co-authored many papers using HIFI data (the latest in 2021).
HIFI Local Oscillator Source Unit Credit: Michel Fich
FYST
Most recently, Mike was instrumental in the formation of the CCAT Observatory, a partnership of Cornell University, the Canadian Atacama Telescope Corporation (CATC - a consortium of eight Canadian universities led by the University of Waterloo), a German consortium (consisting of the University of Köln, the University of Bonn and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics, and Duke University), and the University of Chile. The CCAT Observatory has built the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope (FYST) near the summit of Cerro Chajnantor in the Atacama desert region of northern Chile. At a height of 5,640 meters above sea level, FYST lies above most of the atmospheric layers that block submillimeter waves from reaching the ground. The Atacama Desert’s extremely dry air will provide exceptional views, without water vapour to obscure the signal. FYST features an innovative optical design that allows astronomers to observe over a wide field-of-view in each exposure, enabling them to rapidly and efficiently map wide areas of the sky. Operating in the submillimeter wavelength range of light, FYST will create movies of the sky – “celestial cinematography” – in a part of the electromagnetic spectrum where this has never before been done.
FYST celebrated its inauguration on 9 April 2026 and science operations will begin later this year. Canadian astronomers are heavily involved in all aspects of planning for the science surveys that the telescope will undertake. It was largely due to Mike’s insistence and vision that had driven the design towards the shortest wavelengths, taking advantage of the opportunity for a unique niche. Mike is involved in virtually all of the major technical aspects of this project. He has provided critical input on aspects of control software, pipeline and archive development. Finally, and characteristically, he is the member of the Board of Directors most involved in the day-to-day management of the CCAT project. He has been actively engaged in design, contractor progress and planning reviews, policy and budget development, and the management intricacies of a relatively small international project. CCAT is not a large organization and its success rests largely on the dedication and intense involvement of a small number of individuals, one of whom is Mike, on behalf of the Canadian astronomical community.
The biennial Dunlap Award was established in 2013 following a donation from the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics. It is presented to an individual or team for the design, invention, or improvement of instrumentation or software that has enabled significant advances in astronomy. For more information and a list of past recipients of the award, see the CASCA awards page.
Many congratulations to Professor Fich on this very well-deserved award!
Banner background image: SCUBA-2 map of the Milky Way at 850 micron. (Credit: Joint Astronomy Centre)