The LSST Data Management team continued to grow during the first year of the construction project. In recent months, four team members joined the Tucson-based Science Quality and Reliability Engineering (SQuaRE) group and three others came on board at DM partner institutions SLAC, Princeton University, and University of Washington. Contact information for all seven new team members can be found in the LSST Contacts Database. Read more after the jump.
Jonathan Sick joined DM's Tucson-based SQuaRE team July 31 as a Software Engineer. Jonathan's role will emphasize developer ecosystem tool chains and science user-friendliness. As an engaged supporter of Python and open source coding in astronomy (he can be found on Github as jonathansick), he will help DM make ready the LSST Software Stack for both our LSST users and the community at large. Jonathan earned his PhD from Queen's University in Ontario Canada, where he led the Andromeda Optical and Infraread Disk Survey (ANDROIDS) to make a 5-gigapixel map of our galactic neighbor in six optical and IR bands with the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. The ANDROIDS dataset allowed Jonathan to compare how stellar populations of a galaxy are estimated differently depending on whether or not individual stars are resolved.
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| Jonathan Sick | David Nidever | Angelo Fausti | J Matt Peterson | Nate Pease | Nate Lust | Ian Sullivan |
David Nidever joined DM's Tucson team August 3 as SQuaRE Survey Science lead. He will be in charge of developing algorithms for testing the scientific performance of the LSST software stack and evaluating whether it meets the scientific goals of the LSST collaborations. David brings a wealth of hands-on experience with astronomical surveys. He is Principal Investigator of SMASH, a study of the stellar populations of the Magellanic Clouds with the Dark Energy Camera, and he has played a leadership role in the SDSS III/APOGEE and SDSS IV/APOGEE-2 projects. Until recently he was a Dean B. McLaughlin Fellow at the University of Michigan.
Angelo Fausti Neto joined DM's Tucson team August 24 on a one-year assignment as a SQuaRE Software Developer. Angelo, who earned a PhD in Astrophysics from UFRGS Brazil, will spend half of his time assisting the SQuaRE team with coordinating its QA (quality assurance) harness' data visualization needs. Since 2010, he has been the Software Architect at the National Laboratory for eAstronomy (LineA) in Brazil. He will continue his LineA work with the other half of his time. As the architect of the Dark Energy Survey Brazil Portal, he has DES builder status. On DES, he was the main developer of Quick Reduce, a web-based system to monitor the quality of the Dark Energy Camera exposures in real time. Angelo has done a great deal of data management in developing the DES Science portal, including data transfer, database and catalog integration tasks, QA tools for images and catalogs and an end-to-end system to automate the installation of data releases, the creation of additional data products and catalogs for science analysis.
J Matt Peterson joined DM's Tucson team September 1 on a fixed-term assignment during which he will help the SQuaRE team develop the metrics infrastructure for its Integration and Verification activities. JMatt previously worked at iPlant Collaborative where he was Lead Software Engineer on Atmosphere - iPlant's infrastructure that provides cloud-based computing services to bioinfomatics researchers. He also is fluent in Python and runs his own software contracting firm, 23nuclear.
Nate Pease joined DM's SLAC team April 22 as a Senior Software Developer.
Nate Lust joined DM's Princeton University team April 22 as a Software Developer.
Ian Sullivan joined DM's University of Washington team August 1 as a research scientist.
Financial support for Rubin Observatory comes from the National Science Foundation (NSF) through Cooperative Support Agreement No. 1202910, the Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science under Contract No. DE-AC02-76SF00515, and private funding raised by the LSST Corporation. The NSF-funded Rubin Observatory Project Office for construction was established as an operating center under management of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). The DOE-funded effort to build the the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera (LSSTCam) is managed by the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC).
The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an
independent federal agency created by Congress
in 1950 to promote the progress of science. NSF supports basic research and people to create knowledge that transforms the future.
NSF and DOE will continue to support Rubin Observatory in its Operations phase. They will also provide support for scientific research with LSST data.
Contact | Employment | LSST Corporation