The astronomer Dr. Michel Fich originally chose a career in Physics because he knew it would enable him to pursue his passion for solving puzzles. Coming of age around the time that man first walked on the moon, he was already fascinated by astronomy by the time he was in high school. Fich grew up in Southern Ontario, the eldest of five children. He matriculated at Waterloo as an undergraduate in 1974 as a Chemical Engineering major, but a chance conversation with the Waterloo Physics faculty was enough to convince him to change course.
Until I came to Waterloo, I didn't think of any of my hobbies -- problem solving, astronomy, and computing -- as a potential job,” said Fich.
Nearly a half-century later, Fich has made a remarkable career out of what he initially thought of as his “hobbies.” And though his work regularly takes him all over the world, he has spent the majority of his career at the University of Waterloo.
Dr. Fich’s research focuses on understanding star formation, the interstellar medium, and the structure of galaxies. After receiving his B.Sc. in 1978, he and his wife moved to California, where he received his M.A. and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He went on to spend three years as a Research Assistant Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle, before a contact at Waterloo reached out to him and let him know there was a job opening at the University. He joined the Physics and Astronomy faculty at Waterloo in 1986, and has been with the department ever since.
Much of Dr. Fich’s early research focused on measuring dark matter in the Galaxy. He was one of the first scientists to make precise measurements of dark matter in the Milky Way, and to date, his most cited paper is his data analysis of that material. He focused primarily on this research until the early 1990s, when he felt he’d reached a turning point in his dark matter studies. “When I got to that point, I didn’t really know where to go next. I’d done everything I could with what was available and I couldn’t think of a way to improve on what I’d done at that point,” said Fich. “But I had this huge stack of data on the Milky Way, and I had all kinds of various data that related to other topics — particularly star-forming regions and the interstellar medium between stars.”
Fich followed his curiosity and decided to pivot his research towards star formation and the interstellar medium.
For the next twenty years, my focus was on using that data, augmenting that data to answer interesting kinds of problems, such as how stars are formed and how solar systems are formed.
This direction in his research also pushed him towards the technical side of astronomy. “I did everything I could do with the existing data,” said Fich, “but the data I wanted, you couldn’t get because we didn’t really have the instrumentation to do it. So I became involved with instrument building again.”
In recent decades, Fich has devoted himself to astronomical instrumentation projects, primarily at sub-mm/far-infrared wavelengths. He was the Canadian leader for the HIFI instrument on the Herschel Space Observatory (an ESA/NASA/CSA project) and for SCUBA-2, a wide-field submillimeter camera for the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii, and is currently the Canadian team leader of the CCAT-prime project that will build the 6 meter diameter Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope at an elevation of 5600 meters in the Atacama region of Chile. These projects are multimillion dollar undertakings, complex both technically and bureaucratically. “Every project I’ve been involved with has had things you cannot plan for,” said Fich. “I’ve found managing big budget, high risk projects to be the most challenging thing I’ve had to do in my career.”
After years of effort, the research that will spring from each project will be invaluable. In the case of his most recent project, the Fred Young Submillimeter Telescope, Fich said, “The main purpose is to really set some strong limits on Dark Matter and Dark Energy in the universe. We’re going to set some really strong limits on the mass of neutrinos and other kinds of relic species from the big bang. We’re going to get some good limits on gravitational waves. There’s a whole wide range of fundamental physics subjects we’re going to be able to say something about by the end of this project.”
As an educator, Dr. Fich encourages his students to do as he does and lead with their curiosity. He approaches his students with a simple question:
How can I help you to reach your goal?
Said Fich, “It's not so much that I'm up front pushing them to do stuff. I think the fact that I'm willing to invest my time for them to reach the goal that they set is what motivates them to keep on moving forward.” Fich also plays a large role in fostering the greater community in the Physics community at Waterloo. Each year (excepting 2020, due to COVID-19), he throws a large party for the Physics and Astronomy community at his home in the country. He even hires live music for the event, a particular joy for Dr. Fich, who attends over 150 live concerts every year.
When Dr. Fich is not serving in his many capacities as an astronomer, project manager, and professor, he pursues his many other interests: He gardens (or, as he likes to refer to it, practices “weeding”), leads wilderness canoe trips in Canada’s provincial parks, grows roses, and runs affordable housing projects for families in Mississauga and Brampton. In 2024, he will mark fifty years of association with the Waterloo Physics department, where he has crafted a career that allows him to do what he does best, follow his curiosity and solve problems.
