mckercher's blog

Veronica Huerta joined the LSST Project Office (LSSTPO) November 3, 2014 as Compliance and Quality Administrator. She is responsible for ensuring all Project activities comply with federal regulations, awards, agreements, and applicable terms and conditions of AURA policies and procedures and the AURA Award Management Manual. She also works with the LSST Project Manager to ensure that Project policy is followed and with the Systems Engineering team to ensure technical quality is achieved.

April 4, 2014 - Save the date for the LSST 2014 Project and Community Workshop scheduled for August 11-15, 2014 at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. For the sake of simplicity, the Project has decided to refer to the workshop as merely LSST 2014. It will be similar to the all hands meetings held in the past with emphasis on project/community interaction and cross-subsystem technical topics. The organizing committee hopes the Phoenix  location will make travel easier for out-of-state and international attendees and that the eclectic abundance of restaurants within walking distance of the meeting hotel will help stretch per diem farther.

Watch this space for announcements about the workshop website URL and the opening of registration.

March 27, 2014 - The LSST Project Office is happy to announce the hiring of Stefan Dimmick as an IT Systems Administrator.  Alongside Iain Goodenow, he will support the ongoing development and maintenance of LSST computer systems. Stefan’s office is room M-12C in the NOAO buiding (next door to Iain); his extension is 318-3892; his email is: sdimmick@lsst.org; and his supervisor is Daniel Calabrese.

Mario Juric, the LSST Data Management Project Scientist has been awarded the 2014 AURA Science Award.  The award recognizes Mario as an intellectual leader of the astronomical community, who contributes not only through his individual research, but also by enabling scientific research by others.

February 28, 2014 - Glenaver Charles-Emerson has joined the LSST Project Office as an administrative assistant. Glenaver has been assigned to support the LSST team at NOAO, including the Telescope and Site, Data Management, and Systems Engineering groups. She brings a diverse skill set to LSSTPO with experience as an administrative professional in academic, finance, and medical settings. In addition to Tucson, she has lived and worked in Kansas, Guam, and her native England. Please join us in welcoming Glenaver to LSST.
 

February 11, 2014 - As project activities have intensified and as the Tucson project staff has grown, the Project Calendar (found in sidebar navigation menu to the left of this blog) has become a bit cluttered. In order to make it easier to read, and therefore a more useful tool, the calendar has been split into two calendars. The first is the Project Events Calendar with reviews, meetings, report due dates, etc. As an example, this is where you would find the LSST Project and Community Workshop (formerly the All Hands Meeting) planned for August 11-15.

Design News magazine has named Brookhaven National Laboratory/LSST engineer Justine Haupt as 2014 Rising Engineering Star. The magazine's editors selected Justine for her work designing test systems for LSST's focal plane components. She was chosen from an impressive slate of candidates including engineers working on underwater robotic fish, smart glasses software, and prosthetic limbs. She is the second person to receive the honor. Design News senior editor Rob Spiegel said, "Justine is impressive in her range of excellence. She has strong engineering skills, but she also gives back to her professional community." Congratulations, Justine!

LSST and the Dark Energy Survey have announced a joint workshop at Fermilab March 24-27, 2014 to share information about tools and lessons learned and to discuss future synergistic activities. The first three days of the workshop will be filled with talks on topics of broader interest; the final day (Thursday) will be available for smaller, more focused meetings. The chairs of the Scientific Organizing Committee request that suggestions for Thursday topics and participants be emailed to them (ivezic@astro.washington.edu and dodelson@fnal.gov). Note also that in addition to invited talks, the SOC may accept a limited number of contributed talks.

For more information and to register please visit http://indico.fnal.gov/event/DES-LSST. The registration period ends March 1, 2014.

Three LSST team members held a successful book signing event for their recently published book Statistics, Data Mining, and Machine Learning in Astronomy, A Practical Python Guide for the Analysis of Survey Data during the January 2014 meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in Washington, D.C. Zeljko Ivezic, Andrew Connolly, and Jacob VanderPlas collaborated with co-author Alexander Gray on the book, which provides a comprehensive and accessible introduction to the cutting-edge statistical methods needed to efficiently analyze complex data sets from astronomical surveys such as PanSTaRRS, DES, and LSST.