LSST - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Istituto Nazionale Di AstroFisica - INAF
Alex Malz is a cosmostatistician with interests spanning extragalactic astronomy in the uncertainty-dominated regime, focusing on the use of large quantities of low-information-density photometry to infer the physics of the dark universe. He develops and applies principled mathematical tools to extract physical information from noisy data to address problems ranging from photometric redshift estimation to light curve classification; he is a member of the Rubin PZ Commissioning Team as well as the PLAsTiCC/ELAsTiCC Team. He also conducts research on approaches to optimize design decisions for astronomical surveys and analyses thereof for a variety of static and time-domain science goals in the contexts of the DESC, ISSC, TVS, AGN, and Galaxies Science Collaborations. Alex loves to hack and is passionate about open software development and collaboration-building.
Job Titles:
- Member of the LINCC Frameworks Leadership Team
Andy Connolly is the LINCC Frameworks PI at the University of Washington and the Director of the University of Washington's eScience Institute. His research interests range from studies of the Solar System to observational cosmology. This includes the detection of Trans Neptunian Objects using novel techniques for coadding of images (KBMOD), studies of the clustering of galaxies and their evolution with redshift, and estimating the properties of galaxies based on their colors (aka photometric redshifts). The common theme to this is developing ways to work with massive data sets, such as those that will come from the Rubin Observatory. He co-wrote a book on machine learning for astronomy with Zeljko Ivezic, Jake VanderPlas, and Alex Gray.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
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- Professor in the Department of Statistics & Data
Chad Schafer is a Professor in the Department of Statistics & Data Science at Carnegie Mellon University. For more than 20 years, he has been engaged in research and organizational activities at the interface of statistical methods and astronomy. Research interests have included the use of classical and likelihood-free inference for cosmological parameter estimation and nonparametric and semiparametric approaches to the estimation of natural summary parameters such as luminosity functions. He has been involved with the Rubin Observatory through the Informatics and Statistics Science Collaboration, serving as co-chair of this group for several years. He has been the co-chair of recent versions of the Statistical Challenges in Modern Astronomy series of meetings. He has also contributed to several summer schools and outreach opportunities aimed at advancing the level of data science methods used in astronomy.
Colin Orion Chandler's research focuses on solar system bodies, especially asteroids with comet-like tails, known as active asteroids. Active asteroids hold clues about the formation of the solar system, the origins of water on Earth, and the present-day volatile distribution, which is important for future space exploration missions. Colin leads the Citizen Science project Active Asteroids (a NASA Partner) with the aim of finding more active asteroids with the help of volunteers on the Zooniverse platform. Colin also works on exoplanetary atmosphere modeling and habitability and hopes to find LSST science cases for all of these areas of science. Colin is an avid outdoors enthusiast, and cross-country skis, snowboards, mountain bikes, stand-up paddleboards, and more, often with his partner Mark.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Officers Team
- Business and Finance Manager
- Ex Officio
Job Titles:
- Corporate Secretary
- Member of the Officers Team
- Ex Officio, Rubin Observatory
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Chairman, SLAC / Stanford
Job Titles:
- Member of the Software Engineering Team
Doug Branton completed his undergraduate studies in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Washington and afterward worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute for five years, where he supported the Hubble Space Telescope as a member of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) team. His research interests include the application of data science, machine learning, and software engineering to solve data-intensive challenges in Astronomy, particularly those that come along with survey-scale datasets.
Job Titles:
- Chief Executive Officer
- Member of the Officers Team
- Ex - Officio
Dr. Beth Willman joined LSST Discovery Alliance on September 7, 2022. She is a leader in the science and management of ground-based astronomy facilities.
Her 20 years of research accomplishments have utilized wide-field survey datasets that are precursors to the Rubin LSST. Her primary scientific focus has been near-field cosmology, the detailed study of the nearby universe to answer questions such as "How has the universe formed and evolved?" and "What is the nature of dark matter?" Willman led the research team that discovered the first ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (Willman 1 and Ursa Major I), now known to be the most numerous type of galaxy in the Universe.
Willman was the Deputy Director of NOIRLab and the Lab's Project Director for the US Extremely Large Telescope Program. NOIRLab is the preeminent US national center for ground-based, nighttime optical, and infrared astronomy with a $100M annual budget supported by 500 staff members located in Arizona, Hawai'i, and Chile. Rubin Observatory Operations is part of NOIRLab, along with Gemini Observatory, CTIO/KPNO, and the Community Science and Data Center.
She served as Deputy Director of the Rubin Observatory construction project for three years. As Rubin's Deputy Director, she convened community-based initiatives in support of LSST science and led the development of Rubin's operations plan. Prior to her management role at Rubin, she chaired an LSST science collaboration and contributed to the original LSST Science Book released in 2009.
Willman earned a BS in Astrophysics from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of Washington and has held prize fellowships at the NYU Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics and the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard-Smithsonian. Willman spent seven years as a faculty member and department chair at Haverford College, during which time she earned multiple teaching awards.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Software Engineering Team
Job Titles:
- Assistant Research Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering
George Amvrosiadis is an Assistant Research Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and, by courtesy, Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University. He co-teaches courses on cloud computing and storage systems. His current research interests include distributed and cloud storage, new storage technologies, high-performance computing, and storage for machine learning. His group's work has received two R&D100 awards and has been featured in the Morning Paper, HackerNews, and Wired. He spends part of his time at Amazon Web Services.
Job Titles:
- Chairman, Space Telescope Science Institute
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- Member of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Ex - Officio
- LINCC Director
Job Titles:
- Research Corporation for Science Advancement
Job Titles:
- Member of the LINCC Frameworks Leadership Team
- Member of the Software Engineering Team
Jeremy Kubica leads a team working at the intersection of state-of-the-art computer science and cutting-edge astrophysics. He started working with astronomers while completing PhD in Robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. He spent over fifteen years working on large-scale machine learning and software engineering problems at Google, where he led groups in search ads and CloudAI, before returning to the astronomy domain. His research interests include machine learning and scalable algorithms/data structures. He is the author of multiple fun introductory computer science books, including Computational Fairy Tales, The CS Detective, and Data Structures the Fun Way.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Member of the Officers Team
- Vice Chair
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Member of the Officers Team
- Treasurer
- Chairman, Yale University
Mario Jurić is LINCC Faculty at the University of Washington and the director of UW's Institute for Data-intensive Research in Astronomy and Cosmology (DiRAC). His research interests are centered on using large sky surveys to resolve timely and interesting questions about the universe (from the Solar System to large-scale structure) and the development of technology needed to build and utilize such surveys. Mario's present science includes the Solar System Pipelines Team for Rubin Observatory (team lead), the DEEP survey of the Outer Solar System (Co-I), and platforms and algorithms for optimized asteroid searches (Product Manager). Technology projects include science platform research, scalable data analysis with Astronomy eXtensions for Spark (PI), and Scalable Infrastructure for Multi-Messenger Astronomy (SCIMMA; Co-I and Product Owner). Mario was previously the Data Management Project Scientist for Rubin (2012-2017).
Job Titles:
- Member of the Software Engineering Team
Max West has worked in the industry as a full stack developer since graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, both in the large tech firm environment of Amazon and as a member of an extremely small team at a nonprofit. She is excited to work on the large-scale data and computation problems of the LSST project as well as to participate in an academic research environment.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Software Engineering Team
Job Titles:
- Chairman, Princeton University
Job Titles:
- Chairman
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Member of the Officers Team
- Chairman, University of Pittsburgh
- Ex - Officio, University of Pittsburgh
- Ex Officio
Job Titles:
- Lead Project Scientist for LSDB
Neven is a lead project scientist for LSDB and TAPE teams, developing methods to cross-match large datasets and efficiently handle large amounts of time domain data. Neven's previous software development experience is as a pipeline specialist for the Prime Focus Spectrograph, the flagship instrument for the Subaru telescope. His research focus is extragalactic time-domain science, especially time variability of active galactic nuclei. Neven uses large datasets and advanced statistical methods to determine the connections between variability and physical parameters driving this variability. He is involved with commissioning the LSST survey, developing metrics to assess the quality of prompt processing pipeline performance
Job Titles:
- Member of the Software Engineering Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the LINCC Frameworks Leadership Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Insituto Nazionale Di AstroFisica ( INAF )
Job Titles:
- Member of the Software Engineering Team
Job Titles:
- Member of the Software Engineering Team
Job Titles:
- Administrative Assistant
- Bookkeeper
LSST Discovery Alliance is supported by member institution dues, grants from foundations, and donations from corporations and private donors.
Job Titles:
- Member of the Board of Directors
- Chairman, University of Michigan
Job Titles:
- Member of the Software Engineering Team