Cosmic Dawn: Searching for the First Galaxies

A few hundred million years after the Big Bang, the first stars and galaxies formed. Astronomers refer to this event as ``Cosmic Dawn.'' Can powerful telescopes, probing back in cosmic history, directly witness this event? Large telescopes have already traced the history of galaxies back to when the Universe was 1 billion years old. The latest results from the Hubble Space Telescope give us our first glimpse of primitive stellar systems at even earlier times. Professor Ellis will address the progress and challenges of this fundamental quest for our origins, and discuss the future prospects with the next generation of giant 30-40 meter ground-based telescopes.