Plenary Lecture Dr. Kirshner is an astrophysicist studying the physics of supernovae and observational cosmology. He is a member of the High-z Supernova Search Team that used observations of extragalactic supernovae to discover the accelerating universe, which implied the existence of dark energy. Dr. Kirshner’s graduate students Brian Schmidt and Adam Riess shared the 2011 Nobel Prize in Physics with Saul Perlmutter for the discovery of cosmic acceleration. He teaches a popular course for Harvard undergraduates called “The Energetic Universe” and is author of the book The Extravagant Universe: Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos. He is a past president of the American Astronomical Society, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a 2012 Guggenheim Fellow.