sgontcho

What is your role in the DESI project ?

I’m a member of the DESI scientific research staff at NSF’s NOIRLab, where our team works to ensure that DESI performs as expected and will continue to do so throughout its many upcoming years of operations. I’ve been heavily involved in the DESI target selection imaging surveys for over five years. As part of this effort, I’m responsible for processing roughly a quarter petabyte of NASA infrared satellite images. Recently, I’ve shifted toward working with the DESI commissioning team that’s testing all of the newly installed DESI hardware at Kitt Peak’s Mayall telescope via a campaign of preliminary sky observations. Within the DESI commissioning team, I’ve created image processing pipelines to analyze data from the commissioning camera and guider cameras.

Where were you born ? Where do you live now ? What are the interesting places that standout that your work has taken you to ?

I grew up in Bellevue, Washington. I currently live in Tucson, Arizona. The past travel opportunities that stand out to me are DESI-related trips to England and Spain for collaboration meetings, and visiting Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. Kitt Peak is also great — even though it’s only about an hour’s drive from Tucson, it’s still a world-class astronomical site.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job ?

In terms of DESI, I really enjoy working with my fellow collaboration members, who are all extremely talented in different areas of technical expertise. I like that I’m continually learning a lot from interacting with DESI collaborators across many institutions and specializations. More generally, as a scientist, my favorite research projects are those that involve mining huge data sets for rare discoveries.

Any advice for aspiring scientists ?

Nowadays there are many ways for everyone to get involved with scientific research, particularly through crowdsourced science initiatives in astronomy and other fields. The Backyard Worlds: Planet 9 project that I co-founded is one such example. Getting involved in crowdsourced science can be a great way to see what the research process is really like in practice, and to learn new skills that will have value even outside of careers in science.

Check out Backyard Worlds Planet 9 project ! https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/marckuchner/backyard-worlds-planet-9 

What is your role in the DESI project ?

I co-chair the DESI time domain working group. The goal of our team is to study the transient Universe: we want to find and characterize explosive events such as Supernovae and kilonovae, the disruption of stars close to supermassive black holes in the center of galaxies, and even the variability of binary stars within our own Galaxy. We are interested in studying thephysics behind the processes that happen within this transients, such as the accretion of mass in binaries and the creation of the heaviest elements of the Universe, but we also want to use some of these events to understand the dynamics of the Universe. In other words, we will also study cosmology with these events.

What have you been working on recently ? 

Currently, I am organizing the time domain working group activities. Within the working group, I have been leading efforts on potential science analyses that involve DESI and gravitational wave detections. In particular, I have been looking into using the DESI galaxies to do cosmology with gravitational waves from compact object binaries, such as binaries containing neutron stars and black holes. I am also studying how we can use some of the DESI fibers (some of the DESI 5000 “eyes to the sky”), to look at interesting emission from these binaries, and more in general, from transients that are detected in the sky by other experiments. In other words, I am interested in following up interesting objects and use them to understand the expansion and content of the Universe.

Where were you born, where do you live now?

I was born in Rome, Italy. I grew up and studied there, until I moved to London for my PhD at UCL. Now I live the Chicago suburbs, I am a postdoc at the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and an associate fellow at the University of Chicago. I like to say that Chicago is the Rome of the US, so I feel at home here!

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?

What I love about my job is the possibility of constantly coming up with new ideas and perspectives to understand the Universe through different angles. I find that there too many interesting things I would like to work on, so I often don’t have the time to pursue them! I also love the possibilities that a big collaboration such as DESI gives to its members: the science possibilities are so broad that all of us get to learn about many different topic, and interacting with collaborators from a different field always brings to exciting new analyses, ideas and results.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?

Society might teach us that there are fields other than science that are more important and that will make you more successful in life. Do not believe that, and if science is your passion, then never give up on your dream! Science is at the base of our everyday life even when we do not realize it, and astronomy in particular has always been one of the most inspiring science fields since the most ancient days of humanity.

What do you do for fun?

When I am not working, I love to do sports. I practice every day: I play beach volleyball competitively, and when I am not doing that, I love to do CrossFit. Olympic weightlifting is one of my favorite things in Crossfit! I also love to listen to music, go to concerts (rock, jazz, blues, electro-swing,…), and to the theatre.

What is your role in the DESI project ?

I manage the work at the Mayall Telescope in support of the DESI project.  During the installation phase, this consisted of daily oversight and planning updates for the installation work plan.  Now that installation is complete, I coordinate the daytime work of the engineering and technical staff with the nighttime science observing.  In doing this, I work closely with Klaus Honscheid, Paul Martini, Connie Rockosi, and many others.

Where were you born ? Where do you live now?

I was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, USA.  Before coming to NOIRLab, I’ve lived in three different countries across ten different time zones.  I live now in Tucson, Arizona, USA.  In normal times, I spend roughly half my time in the NOIRLab offices and the other half at the telescope on Kitt Peak.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about  your job ?

The most interesting thing is the constant flood of opportunities to learn new things.  I’ve absorbed so much about new technologies for instruments from the DESI project, that I sometimes forget all the fascinating cosmology that I’ve learned as well.  The most exciting thing is the chance to contribute to a science product that will have enormous lasting value to the cosmology and astrophysics communities.  And the most fun thing is working with so many people from so many different backgrounds who know so much more than I do about what they’re doing.  DESI project people are always fascinating to talk to!

Any advice for aspiring scientists ?

1) Stay curious; always wonder “what?” and “how?” and “why?”  2) Don’t ever be afraid to talk to people you don’t know.  That’s how you learn.  3) Don’t get discouraged.  Most things or ideas don’t work the first time.  Keep trying anyway.

Finally, what do you do for fun ?

I enjoy bicycling, hiking, going for walks, dining out, and being with my family especially outdoors.

What is your role in the DESI project ?

I have been working on the imaging surveys for the last 5 years or so.  DESI is a survey to build a 3-d map of the universe.  We need to know ahead of time where to point DESI’s optical fibers to collect light from the distant galaxies that we want to map.  We do this by taking regular images of the sky, building 2-d maps, and measuring all the stars and galaxies in these maps.  We select promising galaxy targets for follow-up with DESI based on their shapes and colors in 2-d.  DESI allows us to measure the all-important third dimension — redshift or distance — for these galaxies.

The cosmology goals for DESI require that we have a very uniform and well-understood set of target galaxies that we start from, and this means having sensitive images and careful measurements of the stars and galaxies they contain.  No existing imaging surveys were sensitive enough, so we had to do our own!  We used three different telescopes and cameras, in Chile and in Arizona, to collect all the images we need.  We also use infrared images from the WISE space telescope operated by NASA.

What do you do as part of DESI?

In the early stages of this work, I was part of the team that went to the telescopes to carry out observations.  All together, we spent over 1000 nights to collect these images.  I love traveling to the telescopes; the secluded mountaintops are very quiet and peaceful, and the high desert terrain is starkly beautiful.  Even though it’s very tiring working long night shifts, we get into the rhythm of the sky, watching sunset and sunrise, moonset and moonrise, and even the rise and set of the Milky Way galaxy.

All our imaging observations are finished now, and now we are focusing on the computer programs that detect and measure the stars and galaxies in the images.  This is tricky because we have images taken in a variety of conditions — lots of clear and still skies, but some turbulent skies, and even light clouds on occasion.  We need to squeeze information from all these images, so we have to take into account what the atmosphere has done to the appearance of the galaxies in each image.  We’re currently working on our ninth full processing of our full image collection — Data Release 9 from the DESI Legacy imaging surveys.

In practice, I spend most of my day writing and debugging computer programs, figuring out where and why the software fails and how we can improve our processing to make the best measurements we can.

Where were you born ? Where do you live now?

I was born in Squamish, near Vancouver in western Canada, and grew up in the Kootenay region, in the mountains.  I did my PhD in Toronto, then did postdoctoral work in the USA for five year, then moved back to my partner’s hometown of Waterloo, Ontario.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about  your job ?

I just think it’s amazing that we can measure things about galaxies that are billions of light-years away, and figure out the shape and evolution of the whole universe.  Day to day, I spend a lot of time writing computer code and looking at images of galaxies, and galaxies just look amazing!  Most of the galaxies we will observe with DESI are so distant that they just look like tiny smudges, but nearby galaxies are just endlessly amazing.

I also have the privilege of working with a bunch of very smart, interesting, and dedicated people every day.  It takes hundreds of highly skilled and specialized people, with overlapping knowledge and interests, to make a complicated project like DESI work.  I’m an expert in a tiny little corner of the project, and it’s amazing to me that we can all coordinate our little patches of expertise to build something truly amazing.

Any advice for aspiring scientists ?

One of my advisors says “don’t choose what you work ON, choose who you work WITH”.  That might be a little extreme, but modern observational astronomy is a large collaborative undertaking, and working with people you like and respect is one of the things that makes it really fun.  Big science projects require all kinds of people, so don’t worry that you don’t know everything (nobody does!).  Follow up things that seem interesting to you!  Keep in mind that a lot of the science stories you see in the news are the results of years or decades of work — some days are thrilling, and some days are just a grind like any other job; persistence is really important.

Finally, what do you do for fun ?

I have a family (partner plus kids ages 9 and 11) and we like to go camping and hiking and dig in our garden.

What is your role in the DESI project ?

I am a member of the DESI Lyman-alpha working group. In addition to this, I help organize the biweekly DESI Research Forum.

What do you do as part of DESI?

My work involves building better mathematical models of the Lyman-alpha forest power spectrum and its cross-power spectrum with other cosmological tracers such as quasars. On a day-to-day basis over the last several months, I have typically either been working on analytical perturbation theory calculations, numerically computing them, or playing around with simulation outputs. Our goal is to test these improved models against simulations and data in hopes of better understanding the high-redshift universe and more accurately determining cosmological parameters.

Over the last couple weeks, a panel of DESI members began organizing a new biweekly research forum. I am a member of this panel and spent time helping in this effort. Going forward I plan to be involved with recruiting speakers and organizing talks.

Where were you born ? Where do you live now?

I was born in Miami Gardens, FL and I currently live in Columbus, OH.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about  your job ?

The opportunity to better understand our universe is the most exciting thing about my job. Sometimes I have to take a moment and step back from the difficulties of day-to-day life to remind myself that, in some sense, I get to study the very thing in which all else exists. Nothing else I’m familiar with interests me more!

Any advice for aspiring scientists ?

At times you may feel discouraged from pursuing science because the work gets difficult and you begin to doubt your ability to be successful. Remember that every discovery made or new idea developed came from some person doing what they enjoy. None of those people were magical or possessed superhuman abilities. If they can find success then so can you.

Finally, what do you do for fun ?

I enjoy trying my hand at cooking different dishes and going out to sample the local cuisine. When the weather permits, I try to spend time outdoors at the park and checking out various events in Columbus.

What is your position or role in the DESI project (both generally, and day-to-day activities) ?

I am the point person for tiling and fiber assignment needs during the Commissioning Instrument and the various science programs embedded in late Commissioning phase. I will also do this for the Survey Validation phase of DESI.

This work has led to some software development and creation and maintenance of some visualization tools. The nature of the commissioning of an instrument demands a daily regroup and change of plans based on the ongoing discussions/analysis; the spectrographs and fiber positioner tests require a wide variety of tile designs and quick turnaround in their content and format. Catering to the needs of these tests has been part of my  daily routine over the past 5 months. There was an extended 9 months-long period of preparation prior to the first light which took the largest chunk my days..

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about DESI (and/or your job and/or astronomy in general) ?

The comprehended scales of time and space by us neurologically advanced yet biologically limited creatures, is remarkable.

More astonishing is the notion that this breadth and depth of knowledge is only attained by capturing tiny pockets of energy from the sky and really not much else. To ponder clever/creative ways to derive information from 3% of any complex system to have a clue about the remaining 97%, even if never fully understood/resolved, is one of the most honorable parts of the human heritage.

DESI is making the largest 3D map of the universe and helping to probe such a vast volume of the physical universe we inhabit, in however minuscule way, is a worthwhile endeavor.

If you were not a scientist, what would your dream job be ?

Strangely, at this moment, nothing comes to mind as a dream job I would want to have. It could be a temporary state of mind or it could be because I attempt to do a bit of all I want to do as part-time jobs here and there while I keep an interesting day job; but maybe time investments would be different in other life realizations. Perhaps I would be an artist who does science in spare time as opposed to a scientist who creates art in spare time. .

Any advice for aspiring scientist ? 

Do not hesitate to ask your questions. You’d be surprised by the number of people who do or will have the same question; so your challenge becomes their quest as well; and what’s better than partaking in a collective search for knowledge.

What do you do for fun?

This [i.e., pleasant/meaningful interactions of similar nature]. Paint. Fly. Hike.

What is your role in the DESI project ?

In the past, I’ve largely taken highly polished versions of data and attempted to draw definite conclusions about our Universe, in particular whether we understand gravity as well as we think we do.