meet a DESI member

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
My main role is to co-lead the joint analysis of DESI and external weak gravitational lensing surveys. Both primary DESI probes, baryon acoustic oscillations and redshift-space distortions are excellent probes of dark energy, and so is weak lensing. We hope that by combining these probes, we can achieve more robust constraints on the dark energy equation of state.

Where were you born? Where do you live now?
I was born in Dortmund, Germany. I studied in Münster and Bonn and afterwards moved to Santa Cruz, CA for my post-doc, where I still am today.

What do you do as part of DESI?
Apart from the working group, I help with DESI-II efforts to design a high-density sample optimized for cosmology inference and synergies with external surveys. I also perform a lot of work to validate the measurements we perform using data from DESI and the lensing surveys.

We are working to understand one of the fundamental building blocks of reality. I don’t know what could be more exciting than that. While the day-to-day work can occasionally be boring or frustrating, I only need to remind myself of the big picture to get excited again. It is particularly cool to meet other DESI researchers and learn what they are doing. They never cease to amaze me.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Math is important and will help you to understand the physical background of your research. However, your technical understanding is not the most important thing: Your passion and drive will determine how good of a scientist you are. Both as a scientist and on the road to becoming one, it is important to not let setbacks discourage you from your goal.

What do you do for fun?
I love the outdoors in Santa Cruz and try to spend as much time as I can at the Ocean or in the Forest (Mountain Biking, Hiking/Backpacking, rarely surfing). When it’s raining or dark I like to read or play games (boardgames or video games).

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
My dream has always been to be an Astronaut, and I think it still is.

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
DESI is one of our best chances to understand dark energy. But what excites me the most is the large effort within DESI to combine our data with other external datasets such as weak lensing surveys or observations of the cosmic microwave background. We have an amazing and rich set of cosmological observations, and I think we are limiting ourselves unnecessarily if we only ever look at one observation at once.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am currently a PhD student at the Kavli Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics (KIAA) of Peking University, mainly interested in the co-evolution of supermassive black holes (SMBHs) and their host galaxies. I have led a DESI project on the spectrophotometric decomposition of quasar host galaxies. I am also involved in several other interesting DESI projects that probe the physical properties of AGNs utilizing DESI spectra.

Where were you born?
I was born in Nanjing, Jiangsu, China, an ancient city imbued with rich historical and cultural heritage, which once served as the capital for six dynasties.

Where do you live now?
I live in Beijing now, the current capital of China, since KIAA resides here. The museums and parks here are amazing.

What do you do as part of DESI?
I use the DESI spectra to study the ecosystem of AGNs and their host galaxies. I have developed a spectrophotometric decomposition technique that leverages the comprehensive information from photometry and spectra to determine the host galaxy flux levels in AGN spectra. I have applied the technique to a sample of quasars with extended morphologies in HSC imaging, as well as to a set of DESI CL-AGNs. I enjoy working on the fascinating astronomical objects with high-quality data.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
Examining the decomposition results and seeing clear evidence of host galaxies being decomposed. The high-resolution DESI spectra are fantastic. Many interesting topics can be discussed with the invaluable resources.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Follow your heart. Find an interesting topic and dip into it. It is always helpful to attend meetings and hear others out.

What do you do for fun?
I love various sports, including swimming, basketball, badminton, hiking in the suburbs, and snooker. I also enjoy cooking, reading, and watching interesting videos.

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
Probably a writer, a photographer, or an artist. I enjoy casual lives. It is always wonderful to imagine the possibilities of human beings.

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
Its efficiency and high resolution! DESI has 5k fibers; it is a monster. The cosmology results from such a large sample of astronomical objects are also very interesting.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a senior postdoc working on the cosmological analysis of DESI data.

Where were you born?
Cáceres, a small city in western Spain.

Where do you live now?
Barcelona, a big city in eastern Spain.

What do you do as part of DESI?
I am very active in the Lyman alpha working group. Among other things, I am leading a cosmological analysis of the one-dimensional power spectrum of the Lyman alpha forest.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I genuinely love doing research in cosmology. It is incredibly exciting to explore fundamental questions about the nature of our Universe every single day!

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Being a scientist takes dedication and hard work, but it’s deeply rewarding. If you share a passion for science, pursue it!

What do you do for fun?
I play with my daughter, watch TV series, read books, etc.

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
No idea! 🙂

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
DESI is giving us the most constraining data up to date, allowing us to put the strictest constraints on the nature of dark energy.

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I lead the construction/documentation efforts for the large-scale structure catalogs.

Where were you born?
Burlington, Vermont, USA.

Where do you live now?
Columbus, OH, USA.

What do you do as part of DESI?
I lead the construction/documentation efforts for the large-scale structure catalogs.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
Getting to see the quality of our processed data at its ever growing statistical precision.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Keep asking questions.

What do you do for fun?
Sports (play and watch), listen to music, play with my kids.

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
We’re detecting a preference for time-evolving dark energy. I’m excited to find out if the evidence keeps getting stronger as we continue to collect more data and improve our analysis techniques.

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am the DESI Project Safety Officer

Where were you born?
I was born and raised in Luanda, Angola, West Africa

Where do you live now?
I live 15 min from Berkeley Lab.

What do you do as part of DESI?
At Berkeley Lab, I support scientists and projects including DESI with focus on the implementation of an effective personnel and equipment safety program as well as environmental protection. For DESI, this program is integrated into the overall management and execution of the project at all phases; planning, design, prototyping, construction, assembly and test, commissioning. This requires understanding the system and its vulnerabilities to minimize hazard risk. This is accomplished by working closely with the scientists and engineering teams as well as the staff executing the work onsite.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I find it very satisfying to use the skills I honed throughout my career to support the scientists at Berkeley Lab be successful

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
I have three pieces of advice: follow your passion, set a vision for your future, and be persistent towards achieving your goals.

What do you do for fun? I
Love climbing ice, granite, carving turns in powder and roaming in the high mountains.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
I made the transition from being a scientist to working in Industry and now working at a
National Lab.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
As a physicist it is very exciting to support DESI answer some of the most fundamental questions in cosmology.

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a second year PhD student at IFAE (Barcelona), working in the Lyman-alpha forest group of DESI.

Where were you born?
I was born in Madrid, Spain.

Where do you live now?
I currently live in Barcelona, Spain.

What do you do as part of DESI?
So far, I have been working on improving the Lyman-alpha forest mocks used for the BAO (Baryon Acoustic Oscillation) analysis validation. My work has focused on making both the mocks and the validation pipeline more realistic, ensuring they better resemble the data.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I find it fascinating that by using phenomena that happened so long ago, such as BAO, we can infer so much information about the universe today. I also love that this is a job where you never stop learning!

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Stay curious and keep your sense of wonder. It is easy to get caught up in the routine and forget how amazing it is that we are actually discovering the universe! Also ask every “dumb” question you have, it is how you really end up understanding things (I am still working on this myself!).

What do you do for fun?
I love watching movies, listening to music and reading. I also play piano and sometimes jam with friends, enjoy writing, and of course, spending time with family and friends is always the best.

If you were not a scientist, what would be your dream job?
Probably a mathematician, since I studied mathematics at university and I loved it. But I have wanted to do many different things: be a journalist, a writer, a lawyer, a dancer, a neuroscientist, and many more!

What excites or interests you most about DESI?
I find it very exciting that, by working with DESI, we are able to use new data that no one had access to before, and with it, we might discover things about the universe that we were not even expecting. I also like that we get to do this as part of a collaboration, working alongside other people who share the same passion and goals.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a postdoctoral researcher in large-scale structure and observational cosmology, and one of the leads for the photometric redshift topical group (more on that below!), and a member of several committees that provide resources to early career researchers and underrepresented groups in science.

Where were you born?
I was born and raised in a suburb near Houston, in Friendswood, Texas – in close proximity to the NASA Johnson Space Center!

Where do you live now?
I live in Princeton, New Jersey.

What do you do as part of DESI?
Among the many incredible things DESI can measure for a galaxy, one we can get with very high precision is the redshift. When electrons in atoms are excited, they absorb and release light at very specific energies that are known from laboratory experiments. In a spectrum, this looks like ‘line’-like features at a given wavelength, and DESI observes many of these at once — telling us about the composition and physics happening inside that galaxy.

We also live in an expanding universe where galaxies are receding away from us very quickly — more quickly with greater distances. Those known atomic transition features in light from a galaxy get pulled to redder wavelengths if they’re moving away from us. Measuring the exact amount of this reddening, redshift, allows us to map galaxy distances and, with enough galaxies, large-scale structure in the universe. In the photometric redshift group, we use these precise distances from DESI to learn more about the distances to galaxies that DESI can’t observe and extend that understanding of large-scale structure to the fainter universe. Part of this includes picking targets to observe that best help us disentangle the relationship between galaxy colors and distance. I work at the intersection of spectroscopic and imaging surveys, pairing these distances with galaxy shapes to learn about our cosmic web.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
Observations on this scale are an incredibly powerful probe of cosmology and help us better understand the constituents of our universe. Constraining different models of dark energy and dark matter, learning how the massive structures shaping our reality have evolved over billions of years — it’s all very exciting! With the biggest and most advanced observatories ever constructed coming online it is a fortunate time in history to be a curious person looking up.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
I think there is a large pressure on young people to pick a path quickly, at a time when they know the least about that path that they ever will. Especially for people who don’t see themselves represented in science today, this can lead to self-rejection from what might otherwise be an incredible aptitude and curiosity. I would encourage anyone aspiring to work in science to appreciate that everyone starts from knowing nothing, and the only remedy is asking questions and gaining the tools to answer them. The only unteachable skill is curiosity, and the rest you’ll learn in time if you have the initiative.

What do you do for fun?
I really enjoy playing soccer, creating digital art, and writing speculative fiction.

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument is the first massively multiplexed spectroscopic telescope, ushering in a wave of others (e.g., 4MOST, PFS). This means that it is capable of observing as many as five thousand galaxies at once. Recent pilot studies have shown that DESI is also capable of observing incredibly faint galaxies as efficiently as much larger telescopes. I’m very excited for the potential of a large faint sample of DESI galaxies, telling us about galaxy evolution, their interactions with one another, and the growth of cosmic structure.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I serve as one of the Working Group Chairs for the Milky Way Working Group in DESI.

Where were you born?
I was born in Shanghai, China.

Where do you live now?
I am based at the University of Toronto, so I live in Toronto, Canada.

What do you do as part of DESI?
My journey with DESI began during my postdoctoral position at Fermilab, where I worked on the focus and alignment system—an essential component for DESI’s survey commissioning and operation. I was also involved in DESI’s commissioning and science verification phases. Since the survey officially began, I have primarily contributed to the Milky Way Survey (MWS) and currently chair the MWS Working Group. In the past, I also served on the DESI Publication Board.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
Collaborating with people from all over the world, finding opportunities for junior scientists to engage with DESI data, and then seeing their hard work culminate in a published paper a year later—it’s incredibly rewarding!

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Reach out to DESI members and ask your questions, especially if you’re new to the collaboration. Everyone is friendly and eager to help, and we’re always looking for people to work on DESI data. Don’t be shy—our collaboration meetings are an excellent place to connect with others and get involved!

What do you do for fun?
I love traveling around the world and trying delicious local cuisines.

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
At one point, I wanted to be a diplomat 🙂

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
The DESI data is revolutionary—not just for cosmology but for astronomy and astrophysics as a whole. I feel that the community is still unaware of its incredible potential because they haven’t had the chance to explore the data yet. I feel my current mission is to promote DESI within the broader astronomy community and help more people discover its amazing possibilities!

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a postdoc, and within DESI, I co-lead the galaxy lensing topical group.
 

Where were you born?
I was born in Vilnius – the capital of Lithuania, which is a small country in Europe, next to the Baltic Sea.
 

Where do you live now?
I currently live in Melbourne, Australia.
 

What do you do as part of DESI?
My involvement in DESI is focused on working towards combining it with photometric weak lensing surveys. The weak lensing surveys measure how much the observed shape of galaxies is bent by the structure (foreground galaxies) that the emitted light travels trough to reach us. DESI is a great probe of such foreground structure and so the two types of measurements are complimentary. In my own research I am most interested in finding ways to consistently perform such combined analyses while making use of the full information of the two point galaxy clustering measurements and meaningfully interpret the resulting cosmological constraints. As a co-lead of the galaxy lensing topical group I am responsible for overseeing the different analyses that test a range of models and assumptions needed for a successful combination of the two different types of observations.
 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I love hearing new perspectives on familiar concepts that deepen my understanding and allow me to see how these concepts fit in the bigger picture in a more cohesive way. I also always appreciate all the creative ways that people solve difficult problems. In any kind of combined analysis one usually needs a lot of expertise and imagination to bring together the separate approaches that might have originally been very different from each other. I am always so impressed by the way my colleagues solve these problems and I am very grateful to be learning from them!
 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
My most generic advice is to try and make sure that the choices you make reflect the things you enjoy, whether it is the topic you are passionate about or inspirational people you want to learn from. While there are many frustrating moments in science, it is important that, overall, the process towards completing a research project is in itself interesting and rewarding – and don’t forget to celebrate the little wins along the way! My second piece of advice is to not let the image of what other scientists are like determine what you are supposed to be like to be successful. It is great to get inspiration and guidance but, most importantly, find what works for you.
 

What do you do for fun?
I enjoy going to galleries and concerts, trying out different coffee, exploring new places. I also love swimming and after moving to Melbourne I’ve started learning rowing as well, which has been so much fun and so rewarding!
 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
I think I might quite enjoy doing a different creative job – I used to write a lot in school and I would love to go back to that. In university I used to work at a coffee shop in an art gallery which combined two of the things that bring me much joy, so perhaps a barista-gallery curator would be another fun occupation!
 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
The shear size of the dataset is so impressive – comparing it with the previous galaxy surveys and seeing how far we have come from the first clustering observations is truly awesome. The fact that we are also able to model the distribution of all these galaxies and use that to understand our Universe never ceases to blow my mind, it is such an incredible example of what humans can achieve when working together!
 

 

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am one of the infrastructure contributors in the DESI lensing topical group (part of the c3 working group).

 

Where were you born?
I was born in a city close to Barcelona, Spain.

 

Where do you live now?
I have been moving to several countries in the last few years as a postdoc. I am currently living in Madrid, Spain.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
In the DESI lensing topical group, I am leading the main 3x2pt LCDM cosmological analysis, in which we will combine projected galaxy clustering from DESI with weak lensing from DES, KiDS, and HSC.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
It is a privilege (and very exciting) to be able to work with so many talented people on the cosmological exploitation of new high-quality data, such as the DESI catalogs.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
The most important thing is to have good mentors/advisors and to prioritize your mental health.

 

What do you do for fun?
I am an indoor person. I really enjoy playing video games and reading fantasy books to disconnect and relax.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
I have always liked drawing, and there are some artists in my family, so in another life, I would have tried to focus on that. This was actually one of my hobbies years ago.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
We already have very exciting results just from the first year of observations! I cannot wait to see all the cosmological results that will come out after the DESI observations finish.

 

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am currently co-chair of one of the working groups in DESI (alongside Rossana Ruggeri) and our job is to oversee projects that are joint between DESI and other experiments of, for example, the cosmic microwave background (CMB, i.e., the oldest light in the Universe) and weak lensing (i.e., the bending of light due to gravity, which induces an apparent change to the shapes of galaxies).

 

Where were you born?
I was born in Sofia, Bulgaria.

 

Where do you live now?
I live in Berkeley, California.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
I make sure that our main science goals are reached by overseeing the so-called key projects of the collaboration; I analyze data jointly with CMB probes to study the gas distribution and inform weak lensing analysis; I apply galaxy-halo models to the small-scale clustering analysis; I also develop simulation tools on the AbacusSummit suite.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
The excitement of new discoveries (be it small or big); working towards a common goal with a bunch of great people.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Figure out what makes you the happiest work-wise and really try your best to do that.

 

What do you do for fun?
Play the guitar, sing, listen to audiobooks, bike a lot.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
I might work at an NPO, or be a linguist. Something with lots of people-to-people communication.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
The discovery space on small scales; doing things that no one else has done yet (I know this is vague, but this could include new probes, or higher sensitivity that allows us to learn new things about the Universe)

 

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am one of the infrastructure contributors in the DESI lensing topical group (part of the c3 working group).

 

Where were you born?
I was born in a city close to Barcelona, Spain.

 

Where do you live now?
I have been moving to several countries in the last few years as a postdoc. I am currently living in Madrid, Spain.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
In the DESI lensing topical group, I am leading the main 3x2pt LCDM cosmological analysis, in which we will combine projected galaxy clustering from DESI with weak lensing from DES, KiDS, and HSC.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
It is a privilege (and very exciting) to be able to work with so many talented people on the cosmological exploitation of new high-quality data, such as the DESI catalogs.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
The most important thing is to have good mentors/advisors and to prioritize your mental health.

 

What do you do for fun?
I am an indoor person. I really enjoy playing video games and reading fantasy books to disconnect and relax.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
I have always liked drawing, and there are some artists in my family, so in another life, I would have tried to focus on that. This was actually one of my hobbies years ago.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
We already have very exciting results just from the first year of observations! I cannot wait to see all the cosmological results that will come out after the DESI observations finish.

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I’m a PhD student at the University of Rochester working with my advisors Segev BenZvi and Kelly Douglass. I’m involved with the Galaxy and Quasar Clustering working group and the Alternative Clustering Methods topical group.

 

Where were you born? Where do you live now?
I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. I’ve also lived in San Antonio, Texas; Syracuse, New York; Cleveland, Ohio; and now, finally, Rochester, New York.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
I’m creating catalogs of cosmic voids. Voids are large regions of the universe that are tens of millions of lightyears across and have very little matter in them. The number of voids of different sizes that we expect to see is affected by the behavior of dark energy, so we can use voids to learn more about dark energy models. I’m using DESI data to map out where the universe’s cosmic voids are located, with the goal of studying dark energy.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I love being able to visualize the universe on its largest size scales. With computer programs, I can illustrate the locations of thousands of voids in the nearby universe, and with DESI’s data, I’ll expand these maps to cover even larger populations of voids at further distances away from us.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Have fun exploring a broad range of topics to get a sense of what you love the most and what you might want to do for a career. When you go to college, try to find other students and friends in your science classes who you can work with and learn from. Science degrees can be difficult to get, but having a community of people who are in it together with you helps a lot.

 

What do you do for fun?
I like writing science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
It would be fun to be an author alongside being a scientist.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
I love that DESI is a huge, worldwide collaboration involving novel science, intricate engineering,  in-person collaboration meetings, dedicated science outreach, and fascinating visualizations of survey data. It’s great to be part of such a big project!

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a PhD student and currently contributing to cosmic void projects in DESI, specifically testing and validating the FirstGen simulations and investigating the systematics within them. I have led a similar project in DES, and in DESI, we aim to use DESI Legacy Survey DR9 data to probe high redshift voids and their cross-correlations on the CMB. This will further shed light on CMB lensing or ISW imprints from cosmic voids.

 

Where were you born?
I was born in Istanbul, Turkey. The Asian side of Istanbul, to be specific 🙂

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
Finding something new, previously unknown, albeit small, and contributing to the knowledge of humanity. Sharing these results with others at conferences and hearing their opinions is also a fun part.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Science is undoubtedly a collaborative effort and mostly driven by curiosity, so it is important to choose a topic you are very interested in and collaborate with people you would like to work with. This is an important part of the job. You will face many barriers and problems, so it is important to be resilient and solve the problems as they arise.

 

What do you do for fun?
I am an avid hiker and traveler, and I try to hike and travel as much as possible. I particularly enjoy snowboarding and have climbed some 6000-meter peaks in the past. Recently, I have become interested in sailing as well. In addition, I enjoy drone photography and wildlife photography, and I have been to Africa a few times.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
In the past, I considered being a guitarist, to be honest! But I was very interested in science, particularly physics and astronomy, so I decided to pursue science. I think I would be a good entrepreneur as well, as I always come up with new ideas.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
I think DESI’s ability to measure the dark energy equation of state excites most of us, including me. The fact that it has significant potential to indicate new physics or validate our current cosmological model is a great excitement for many of us.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am one of the early career scientists using the data from DESI and other telescopes to derive interesting results about our Universe!

 

Where were you born?
Santiago, Chile

 

Where do you live now?
California, USA

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
I am currently leading one of the kinematic Sunyaev Zel’dovich measurements using DESI galaxies and the Cosmic Microwave Background map from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope.

Galaxies have a gaseous halo surrounding them, which is challenging to observe. Creative and prolific scientists like Rashid Sunyaev and Yakov B. Zeldovich suggested that it is possible to see it by studying the effect this produces in a background light. There is a perfect candidate to be this background, which is the Cosmic Microwave Background. This is a relic and smooth source of light at microwave frequencies, emitted when the Universe was 380,000 years old! A way of visualizing this effect is to think of galaxies as part of a shadow theater, where the Cosmic Microwave Background illuminates the scenario from the back. There is an additional thing to mention: if these galaxies were steady, this effect would not be as powerful as it could be. Luckily, galaxies have what we call “peculiar velocities”, meaning they move on top of the expansion of the Universe. When combining the velocities of galaxies and the  Cosmic Microwave Background, we can study the gas of galaxies. This is the kinematic Sunyaev Zel’dovich effect!

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
What I found extremely interesting from my job as a graduate student is that my meetings are about discussing fundamental physics and ideas of the Universe, as I always dreamed of.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
To aspiring scientists I would recommend them to learn English as much as they can in their earlier careers. As a non-native speaker I have been on multiple occasions in which I do not understand what people are asking/answering. I also want to tell them it is okay to ask if something is not clear!

 

What do you do for fun?
I like taking analog pictures and developing them in a darkroom. I also love doing scientific outreach and using social media to spread scientific knowledge.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
I would have loved to be an actress or a philosopher.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
It is incredible to think how many galaxies it has detected in such a short time! The first results are already astonishing. I am so impressed we can see so deep into the past of our Universe just by looking from Earth.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I’m a postdoctoral research fellow working on finding and studying the long-term properties of tidal disruption events. You can think of this as listening for the echoing screams of a star being torn apart by a black hole it has had the misfortune of drifting too close to! In reality it’s about finding the specific pattern of light these events leave in the spectrum of the galaxy in which they happen. As part of this work, I’m a member of the ‘Transients and Low-Redshift Cosmology’ and ‘Galaxy and Quasar Physics’ working groups and am co-lead of the QSO/AGN Topical Group, helping to co-ordinate broader work looking into what the supermassive black holes at the centre of galaxies get up to.

 

Where were you born?
I was born in the Northern Irish town of Ballymena and whilst I might have left, I carry the accent with me.

 

Where do you live now?
I currently live in Portsmouth on the south coast of England close to the University of Portsmouth where I’m part of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
My day-to-day is a mixture of different things. It can be looking through the spectra of galaxies that might contain the signature of an ongoing tidal disruption event to discover and classify new events. I might also use DESI data to follow-up on existing events to see how they have evolved and what that can tell us about them. I also do a lot of computer coding to search for the most interesting objects -with the millions of spectra DESI gathers no one can look through them all! – and to process the data to learn as much as possible both from individual objects and what they can reveal as a group.

As a Topical Group co-ordinator, I also have a role in making sure those of us working on supermassive black holes are aware of what is being worked on by others in DESI so we can learn from each other and move forward as efficiently as possible.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
As the objects I investigate are so far off into the universe, it takes their light a very, very long time to reach us here on Earth. So, in a way it’s like using a time machine, as what DESI picks up from the galaxy ‘now’ is from a time long before dinosaurs roamed the Earth. As my research focuses on individual events, what they can tell us about the galaxies they occurred in and the physical processes that drive some of the most extreme events in the universe, it’s like being a time traveling accident investigator which I think is pretty cool.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
DESI is collecting a truly monumental amount of data, with spectra for millions of galaxies. With a dataset like this we are able to learn a lot more about the rarest types of galaxy, performing studies that just aren’t possible using the small numbers of such objects that have been discovered by chance up to this point. It also goes without saying that with so many galaxies being explored, we are bound to discover things we didn’t even know to look for!

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
I think my two pieces of advice would be:

1) Get as much experience with computer coding as you can. Science and coding are very tightly linked and the more experience you have the easier you will find it to take on new problems. It’s also not as daunting to learn as you might think, and the satisfaction of getting a new piece of code working makes all the challenges worth it.

2) Believe in yourself – there isn’t one path to success. If you have a goal in mind there can be multiple ways to get there and feel free to reach out to people in the field, I’m sure they will be happy to offer advice and support.

 

What do you do for fun?
I’m an avid RPG and strategy gamer with ‘Starfield’ and ‘Stellaris’ being a couple of my go-to’s, with Pokémon having a strong grip on me as well. I find spending time with my friends at a local pub or restaurant is an excellent way to unwind after a busy week. There is also little better than curling up with a cup of tea and watching a good movie or TV program – ‘House of the Dragon’ and ‘The Traitors’ being my current favourites.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
Now that’s a tough one. Being an astronomer has been my dream job since I was about four years old so I’d have to go with a veterinarian.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am the co-leads of the absorber topical group and used to serve on the Early-Career-Scientists committee.

 

Where were you born?
I was born in Hunan, China.

 

Where do you live now?
I live in Beijing now.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
Always seek new knowledge, identify new objects, and interpret their originality.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
As the co-leads of the absorber topical group, I help coordinate related science projects and strengthen communication between the quasar-galaxy physics working group and the Lya working group. As a researcher, I worked on quasar and galaxy science projects, analyzed DESI data, and contributed to DESI’s observation and outreach activities (please see the DESI planetarium film)!

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Stay curious and chat with people in all fields.

 

What do you do for fun?
Sports, music (playing the Erhu, a Chinese classical instrument, and having limited skills on the guitar 🙂 and traveling.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
Astronaut or architect.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
Mapping the universe with the most details (especially stars and galaxies!)

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am an Early Career Scientist (ECS) working mainly as a part of the Data, Education and Public Outreach, and Galaxy and Quasar Physics Working Groups. Currently, I co-lead the Anomaly Detection Topical Group.

 

 Where were you born and Where do you live now?
I was born in Bogotá, the capital city of Colombia, South America, and I currently live there.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
In DESI, my Ph.D. work involves using machine and deep learning techniques with DESI observation data. I contribute to the Data Working Group by developing an algorithm based on unsupervised machine learning to identify anomaly spectra in DESI observations. This technique is valuable for the reduction pipeline to identify outliers related to instrumental errors or new physics. Additionally, I work on predicting physical features of galaxies, such as Redshift, using photometric and spectroscopic data to train deep learning models. I’m also involved in characterizing the distribution of bright galaxies z<∼0.5 into the Dark Matter cosmic web.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
The most interesting aspect of my job is the fusion of new technologies with physics. The constant innovation in technology provides exciting tools, gadgets, and algorithms that, when combined with physics, create an amazing synergy.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Be creative. Maintain your love for science and nurture your creativity; they are essential engines for contributing to science and humanity.

 

What do you do for fun?
For fun, I enjoy exploring different cuisines, experimenting with recipes. Occasionally, I practice photography and painting, even though I’m not a professional.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
If I weren’t a scientist, my dream job would be a Chef, specializing in various cuisines, or an artist focusing on the intersection of art and technology.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
What excites me the most about DESI is the enormous amount of data to be observed, the scale and resolution of these observations are impressive, and everything hidden behind this data is intriguing. Being part of this collaboration brings me immense happiness.

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a 4th year PhD student working in the Milky Way Survey (MWS) group. I am also the co-chair of Early Career Scientists (ECS) committee and one of the organizers of DESI research forum talks.

 

Where were you born and Where do you live now?
I was born in Kerala, a South Indian state renowned for its swaying coconut palms, pristine backwaters, and vibrant festivals. After my masters in Bangalore, India, I moved to Taiwan where I am currently doing my PhD at the National Tsing Hua University.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
I work on generating mock catalogues that match the selection criteria of MWS from high resolution AURIGA cosmological zoom simulations. These mocks are realizations of a DESI-like survey conducted in a simulated Milky Way – like galaxy, and can be used to test methods for studying the properties of our stellar halo, the substructures in it and finally, the assembly history of our Galaxy. Besides working on my project, I also organize research forum talks, help with ECS activities and take Support Observer shifts for DESI.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
Astronomy allows us to explore the unknown. Every observation is a small step towards understanding something new, something unique about our Universe. Within this infinite Universe, my love lies closer to home. I am excited to study how our Galaxy formed, its structure and its evolutionary history. Being part of a large collaboration, using a very sophisticated instrument, working with people I admire, someone I have known from the classes I took, or papers I have read is more than exciting.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Never give up on anything you love because of anyone. There will be a lot of ups and downs on the way, but it is all part of a learning process. Talk to people in all career stages, it builds up communication skills, helps in making new collaborations or guide you when you are in need. Always stay updated with what is happening in your field. Enjoy every small thing you learn. Most importantly, prioritize your physical and mental health above everything else.
What do you do for fun?
There are five things I enjoy spending time for: hanging out with people I am close to, having food (and watching others cook), a good movie, travel (anywhere other than crowded cities filled with concrete buildings) and music. I love to read books, blogging and photography, all of which are unfortunately taking a back seat lately.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
Being an astronomer has always been my love. But if not that, social work has been something that has captured my interest (I have had an eye on the social work program of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences in India since a long time).

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
I am someone who was born in a small village, studied in a modest school, enjoyed colorful pictures of stars and galaxies, dream about being an astronomer, and today, as a member of DESI, I interact and collaborate with people who have made enormous contributions to this field. There is nothing more exciting than a dream come true.

 

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I have only recently joined the DESI project. I am very interested to contribute to the synergy between DESI and the  large upcoming space-based surveys in the infrared such as Euclid, SPHEREx and the surveys with the Roman Space Telescope. I would also be excited to serve on the Publication Board, to which I can bring my extensive experience as Associate Editor for PASA.

 

Where were you born?
In Rimnicu Vilcea, Romania, which is a town just below the Carpathian Mountains.

 

Where do you live now?
I live in Durham, which is in the North East of England, and home to the beautiful Durham Cathedral.

 

What do you do as part of DESI?
Since I have only recently joined, I am still navigating my way around in this very large collaboration, trying to understand the different activities to which I could sensibly contribute. My expertise is in optical and near-IR spectroscopy of AGN and the study of their inner structure using time-domain astronomy. I eagerly follow the many publications coming out of the project and hope to be able to join meetings soon. But, unfortunately, it is too late for me to make travel arrangements to come to the DESI meeting in Hawaii in December.

 

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
The most exciting thing about being an astronomer is that no day is like the other. The job might get frustrating at times, but it surely is never boring. If I have a new idea on what I would like to research and publish, I can just do it.

 

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
For an answer I would like to quote from Max Weber, a German sociologist, who wrote in “Science as a vocation” (1917): ” … Do you in all conscience believe that you can stand seeing mediocrity after mediocrity, year after year, climb beyond you, without becoming embittered and without coming to grief? Naturally, one always receives the answer: ‘Of course, I live only for my “calling.” ‘ Yet, I have found that only a few men could endure this situation without coming to grief. …”

 

What do you do for fun?
I like to spend time with my children. Listening to their views and ideas and seeing their need to express themselves in art is fascinating.

 

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
I cannot imagine myself not being a scientist.  I find that it is most rewarding and exhilarating to discover for the first time even the smallest part of Nature’s hidden secrets.

 

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
I am excited about DESI’s possibility to measure the neutrino masses. But, of course, the possibility that we might soon have a satisfactory answer to the profound question of the nature of Dark Energy, which will come from DESI but also from other facilities working towards it, such as Euclid and LSST, makes me think that we live in historic times!