meet a DESI member

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a member of the Data Management team with primary responsibility for data transfer and archiving.  This includes the transfer of raw data from Kitt Peak to NERSC, as well as transfers and backups of reduced data.

Where were you born?
Dayton, Ohio, USA.

Where do you live now?
Tucson, Arizona, USA.

What do you do as part of DESI?
The role of data archiving requires very careful thought about how data will be accessed and used by the collaboration and the general public. In order to maximize utility and minimize potential confusion, strict quality standards need to be applied to data, code and documentation.  Many of these quality standards can be enforced by automation, and I also advise other collaborators on simple ways they can ensure quality from the outset.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I would say on-mountain observing, but that hasn’t been possible for a very long time.  That’s unfortunate because the experience of actually working at (in?) a telescope is valuable as well as exciting. Another interesting aspect is following developments in the wider fields of supercomputing, storage, programming and other advanced information technology fields, and sharing that experience with NOIRLab and DESI.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Travel. The current state of affairs is just a phase, and society will realize the importance of travel again. For now, pay for it yourself if you have to, but get out there into the whole world. You can’t taste the food over Zoom.

What do you do for fun?
Hiking, biking, reading, running, enjoying the cuisine of Tucson, a World City of Gastronomy.

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
Cocktail mixologist.

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
DESI is building on the success of a great team of scientists and engineers, many of whom worked for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). It is always a privilege and a pleasant experience to continue working with this team. Considering the astonishing breadth of results from SDSS, the scientific possibilities of DESI are mind-blowing.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am currently a co-convener of the DESI Year 1 BAO Key Project.

Where were you born?
Busan, South Korea

Where do you live now?
I live in Athens, Ohio, a small college town. This year, though, I am living in Berkeley, California, for my sabbatical leave. I am super excited.

What do you do as part of DESI?
My postdocs, students, and I are members of the galaxy—quasar clustering working group and our focus is on how to better reconstruct the cosmological information in the distribution of the galaxies, part of which has been lost during the evolution of the Universe for the last 13.8 billion years. We are also working on how to best clean up the observational systematics from the data using a deep learning method.

As a co-convener of the Year 1 BAO Key project (aka Key Project 4), I and many KP4 participants together are working on robustly deriving the DESI Year 1 BAO measurement. We expect the first year DESI data alone to produce the best BAO measurement to date, and therefore it requires a much more stringent systematic control than has been ever done.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
What can be more exciting than learning about our Universe? 🙂

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Do what you like the most (but I am 99.99% sure that whoever reading this already like astrophysics very much). And the postdoc time is the best time (so, keep swimming).

What do you do for fun?
Learning new things such as piano, kick-boxing, and ballet.

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
This job was my dream job. My alternative dream job was a cartoonist (I had good talent on this, except that I could not redraw the same character more than once).

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
This is the best galaxy survey data today and also I very much appreciate and enjoy the collaborative environment of DESI. Working with people across the world to solve a common question brings you some exciting moments from time to time.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
After co-chairing the Lyman alpha WG for several years, I am now co-convener of Key Project 6. We plan to measure BAO above redshift 2 from the correlations of the Lyman alpha forest, and its cross-correlation with the quasars themselves.

Where were you born?
I was born in Barcelona.

Where do you live now?
Finally, I am back to Barcelona after 9 years of wandering around the globe.

What do you do as part of DESI?
Besides coordinating the BAO measurement of KP6, I like to study the distribution of matter on Megaparsec scales using the Lyman alpha forest, and compare the measurements to hydrodynamical simulations.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I like working on puzzles, like a difficult Sudoku or the accelerated expansion of the Universe.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Being a scientist is fun, but there are other cool jobs out there. So give it a good shot, but don’t get too obsessed about it.

What do you do for fun?
I like playing sports (climbing, tennis, football) and I love trying new food and beers.

If you weren’t a scientist, what would be your dream job?
I’d like to understand the chemistry of cooking. I know, I’d still be a scientist, but a very different one!

What excites/interests you most about DESI?
I like being part of a large collaboration, seeing lots of creative people working together to achieve these very complex and exciting measurements.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I’m a postdoctoral fellow who works mostly in the Clustering, Clusters, and Cross-correlation as well as the Galaxy and Quasar Clustering working groups.

Where were you born and where do you live now?
I was born in Fremont, California, and have lived my entire life in various parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. I currently live in Oakland, and work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, which sits just up the hill from UC Berkeley’s campus.

What do you do as part of DESI?
I run computer simulations of how structure in the universe forms assuming different scenarios for what the universe is made of, and then compare those simulations to the data that DESI is taking. In doing so, we can learn about the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy. The hard part of my work is figuring out how to compare my simulations, which are highly idealized, to the highly complex data that DESI gathers. One challenge related to this is that my simulations include only dark matter, while the galaxies that DESI is observing are composed of luminous matter, like us. This is a very fun problem to tackle, as it involves building models for the connection between dark and luminous matter. On any given day, I use a combination of high-performance computing, statistical techniques and analytic theory to make progress on these problems.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I love how many different fields of science and technology I get to use in order to solve problems. Some days my work is entirely computer programming, others I get to work on fun statistical problems, and others still are spent reading technical physics theory papers and working out derivations of my own. I also truly enjoy collaborating with and learning from a broad range of colleagues who all bring their own expertise and perspectives.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist/engineer?
My advice is two-fold: First of all, pursue your passion. I have found that I am far more effective at working on something whose goals I believe in wholeheartedly. Intrinsic motivation is so much more powerful than extrinsic pressure to perform. In order to find intrinsic motivation, it’s very important to maintain an open and curious mind. Sometimes the things that are most interesting can take you by surprise. Secondly, learn as much math and programming as possible. These skills are necessary for virtually all science and technology, and so by learning as much of them as possible, you will open many doors for yourself.

What do you do for fun?
I love the outdoors. The San Francisco Bay Area, with its hilly topography, is a great place for road biking. I also enjoy backpacking and skiing in the nearby Sierra Nevada mountains. I’ve played basketball for my entire life and while I don’t play much anymore due to various accumulated injuries, I am still a big fan of the local professional basketball team, the Golden State Warriors.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I have being working in different working groups and participating in different tasks since 2015. Now I am mainly involved in the galaxy clustering and Cosmo Simulation working groups, but some time ago also contributed to some tasks of C3. Since 2019, I am co-leading the DESI Mock Challenge with Shadab Alam and Albert Chuang. I am leading the Mock Challenge in Reconstruction and Baryonic Acoustic Oscillations. Also, I am currently the chair of the meetings committee and I participate in the DEI committee as the liaison with the meetings committee but also because I am interested in inclusiveness and equity in academy.

Where were you born and where do you live now?
I was born in Mexico City. I did my bachelor’s in Facultad de Ciencias UNAM. Then I did my graduate studies in France (Universite Paris-XI and then Universite Paris VII in Laboratory APC). After finishing my studies I moved to the US in Pittsburgh, where I did a post-doctoral position in Mc William Center of Cosmology at Carnegie Mellon University. Then I came back to Mexico City where I am in a tenure track position for the past 7 years at Instituto de Fisica at UNAM.

What do you do as part of DESI?
I am working on the main observables of DESI: BAO and RSD. I am now co-leading the Mock Challenge and in particular I’m coordinating the Mock Challenge of Reconstruction and BAO. Currently I am focused on working on the publications that summarize two years of this effort. I am also helping in the preparation of SV3 mocks, in particular applying the FA to those mocks with the footprint of Year 1. I am also co-advising several students of our group of Observational Cosmology at UNAM to participate in DESI. For the last 2 years I worked with a masters student on the effects of Fiber Assignment with simulations and exploring mitigation techniques with LRG, and now working on the pipeline to apply the fiber assigning to mocks. I am currently co-advising a graduate student for participating in the RSD mock Challenge and another graduate student participating in the BAO mock Challenge. Also, I am working with another graduate student on the generation of simulations with non Gaussianities and their analysis in the context of DESI. Another student of our group is working on the effect of massive neutrinos in the large scale structure with the goal to apply this to DESI and potentially 2 more students will start soon as well to work on another project related to forward reconstruction in the context of DESI.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I really enjoy working within collaborations, I’m very happy to be able to discuss with experts in the field weekly I consider there is a lot of interaction and community feeling. I like the possibility to meet people from different parts of the world and different experience and expertise. I grown within these large collaborations my whole academic life, for me, the collaboration is like my academic family. I learned from the experts when I was a graduate student in the BOSS times, then I became a postdoc and I continued working and learning in the context of BOSS. I increased my network of collaborators thanks to the constant interaction within the collaborations as a postdoc. Now as a junior assistant professor I am trying to transmit my knowledge acquired over the years and potentiate the development of the early career scientist and also continue learning as a medium career scientist I consider myself.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist/engineer?
Collaborate with others, science is a collaborative effort. Collaborations are a great environment to learn and interact with experts all over the world, profit of this network of experts, ask as many questions as you want, scientist are always learning, do not be shy or be shamed of asking questions, join projects, try new ideas, have fun with research now and worry less about the future, you will define your way as you walk through it. Open all the possibilities and never close a door.

What do you do for fun?
I like to practice yoga and dance. I also like biking, hiking in the mountains and running. I started boxing lessons recently, and zumba but also I am trying to go the gym more often. When I have time I like to cook, and garden. I also have a violin and I would like to learn how to play it one day, I like to sing but I am not that good (it seems). I also have two big dogs always willing to play and walk the streets of the busy Mexico City.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I’m a postdoc at the University of Utah. My formal DESI role is chair of the collaboration’s Education and Public Outreach committee.

Where were you born and where do you live now?
I was born and grew up in Portland, Oregon. I now live in Salt Lake City, Utah, but before that I called California home for over 15 years.

What do you do as part of DESI?
Primarily I work on creating mock galaxy catalogs for characterizing the DESI luminous red galaxy (LRG) sample and (hopefully) improving models of small-scale galaxy clustering. I also did a lot of visual inspection of LRG spectra in preparation for the main survey, and do the occasional remote observing shift as a Support Observer. A big part of my role on the collaboration’s Education and Public Outreach committee is updating the public DESI website (where you’re reading this now!). I’m starting to work on the pages that will announce DESI science results and data releases as they become available.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
The data I use in my research comes from light that has traveled halfway across the observable Universe (OK, not quite that far, but still astounding!). I’m continually amazed that humanity can unravel the history of the cosmos itself with just ancient photons that survive the journey to our telescopes. We’re such a tiny speck in an incomprehensibly vast universe that it doesn’t seem it should be possible, but it is!

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
There isn’t one right path you must take to become a professional scientist. College was challenging for me, so much so that I didn’t apply to graduate school right away. Even though I’d wanted to be an astrophysicist ever since I learned that’s an actual job, college left me seriously questioning whether I had what it takes to succeed in grad school. It was several years before I rediscovered the resolve to apply and built up the experience to craft a successful application.

Also, while easier said than done, don’t be intimidated by what you don’t yet understand or the skills you don’t yet have.

What do you do for fun?
I like to cook and bake, “train” for half marathons, and explore the abundant natural beauty surrounding Salt Lake City. Occasionally I even find time to work on my latest craft project: a cross-stitch of a spiral galaxy that I started over two years ago. If I thought I could make a living at it, I would be an artist who focuses on abstract geometric sculptures.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a graduate student at UC Irvine working toward my PhD. In DESI, I am part of the Lyman-alpha Forest working group and I am one of the Lyman-alpha quasar catalog co-leads. I am also part of the DESI mentoring program as both a mentor and a mentee.

Where were you born and where do you live now?
I grew up in Center Line and Warren in the metro-Detroit area of southeast Michigan, and I did my undergrad at Wayne State University in Detroit. I now live in Irvine in Southern California. Sometimes I miss having seasons and snow but my recent trip to Michigan brought me back to reality.

What do you do as a part of DESI?
I recently started a project to study the impact of quasar redshift errors on the 3D cross-correlation of quasars with the Lyman-alpha Forest. As one of the quasar catalog co-leads I am helping to put together a quasar catalog that will be used for future Lyman-alpha science analyses. I am also interested in using these quasars to study baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO). Previously, I helped out with commissioning by looking at GFA calibration data, and I’m hoping to get more involved with the focal plane team in the future. I’ve also done some observing shifts in the past, and am looking forward to more shifts in the future!

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
As a graduate student, I am always learning new things. Being a part of a collaboration like DESI also means that I get to travel, meet people, and make friends from all over the world! I always thought my career path would be pretty straightforward: get my PhD, do a postdoc, get a job at a university. I’ve learned though, that there are so many different opportunities and different paths I could take within astronomy/astrophysics that don’t necessarily involve teaching and are all very interesting. Good thing I’ve got a few years before I really need to decide!

Any advice for an aspiring scientist/engineer?
There is a lot of great advice from other DESI members but one thing I think is extremely important is that you don’t have to do science 24/7 to be a great scientist! It’s very important to set boundaries and take breaks to find and maintain a good work/life balance. Some people enjoy using their free time to work, others don’t, and both are okay! You have to find the right balance for you. Also never be afraid to ask questions as there is no such thing as a dumb question! A tip: if you don’t want to ask in front of other people you can usually ask your questions in an email after the talk or lecture. Finally, learn to code.

What do you do for fun?
Outside of DESI and my PhD I enjoy spending time with my friends and family. I love going to hockey games, especially when the Detroit Red Wings come to town. I try to watch every game when they’re not in town. Within the last year or so I’ve taught myself to crochet and I am currently trying to teach myself to knit. I also like to build puzzles, play video games, complete paint by numbers, and I’m hoping to start baking more in the upcoming year.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am currently a postdoctoral fellow at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, which is an institutional member of DESI. In terms of my role within DESI, I’m an active member of the c3 working group and one of the co-organizers of the galaxy cluster analysis within c3. I also served as a member of the secondary target selection review committee for the DESI SV and Y1 data.

Where were you born? Where do you live now?
I grew up in Saratoga Springs, NY. I did my undergrad at Brown University and my Ph.D. at the University of Michigan. I’m currently living in Shanghai, China, where I work at Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

What do you do as part of DESI?
I am working with DESI data to study galaxy evolution within cluster environments. The first of these projects is constructing a complete sample of SDSS-redMaPPer clusters from DESI observations to understand projection effects on cluster membership. The second is a study of the stellar outskirts of massive galaxies using DECaLS data as a proxy for identifying clusters. Additionally, I’m participating in the remote observing effort for DESI, which I’m very excited to do!

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I love that Astronomy allows me to ask and investigate the big questions. As much of my research is related to galaxy evolution, I love exploring the past to look at massive galaxies at different points in cosmic time in order to understand the physical scenarios that have led to the observations that we currently see. Because Astronomers don’t have the ability to watch individual galaxies change over time, I really enjoy using our snapshot images of different galaxies to construct a rough evolutionary pathway to estimate how massive galaxies evolve.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Make sure to find good and supportive mentors. Especially in graduate school, it’s very important that you find a mentor that you can work well with and who supports you both as a person and as a scientist. From my experience, it’s incredibly important to build a network of mentors and collaborators that you can go to for help and advice, whether it’s research advice, job advice, or life advice. I think it’s also important to remember that these mentors don’t have to be located at the same University you are or work in the same sub-field of Astronomy that you are working in.

What do you do for fun?
When I’m not working on the many different astronomy projects that I’m currently involved in, I enjoy running in different parts of Shanghai, reading comic books and manga, and cooking delicious vegan food and baked goods!

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am currently a third year graduate student at Stanford leading analysis on the DESI LOWZ Secondary Target Survey.

Where were you born? Where do you live now?
I was raised in Marin County in California and am currently living in Palo Alto.

What do you do as part of DESI?
I mainly work on analysis for the LOWZ survey. I am interested in understanding the properties and histories of nearby low redshift dwarf galaxies. I have worked on the survey since its conception, through the process of target selection, and am now heading the analysis of the SV3 and early main survey data. I am interested in how nearby dwarf galaxies can help us understand the formation histories of dwarf galaxies within the Milky Way.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I enjoy the problem solving aspect of computational astrophysics. I like the process of going from a project’s conception to understanding how to efficiently implement the analysis in code. I also like the intimacy of low redshift analysis where I can come to know the objects I work with as individuals. Lastly, I have always deeply valued the social aspects of science. Getting to collaborate and just hang out with my colleagues at all career stages is always a daily highpoint.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Have fun! As a scientist, it is easy to get caught up in the stress about your performance, knowledge, or career advancement. While these aspects all matter, they can easily overshadow the reasons one gets in to science in the first place—a desire for knowledge and curiosity about the world. Remember to take time to reflect on how awesome the work you are doing is. Contributing to the project of human exploration is valuable, even if you are just an elementary school student working on your first science experiment. Don’t listen to anyone who tells you that you are not good enough, and strive to find people who remind you why you love science rather than make you feel like you don’t belong.

What do you do for fun?
For fun I enjoy cooking, writing, and drawing. I also love hanging out with close friends over good food and good wine surrounded by interesting conversations. I am an avid consumer of podcasts and leftist YouTube channels and love learning about topics outside of astrophysics from literature to history. I am currently supplementing my graduate school course load with an excellent course on Victorian poetry. Before COVID, I also enjoyed going out to see live theater in the Bay Area.

What is your role in the DESI project?
I’m a post-doc mainly involved in GQC working group.

Where were you born? Where do you live now? 
I was born in Seoul, Korea and currently living in Shanghai, China for my post-doc position at SJTU.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about DESI?
One of the most interesting thing about DESI for me is to experience the pipeline for processing spectroscopic data. Before joining DESI, ‘data’ were just some binary files to me consisting of many columns including RA, DEC, z, and some weights. But, after joining DESI, I had many chances to learn about how raw data are processed in the pipelines before arriving at my hands. For example, participating in visual inspection and working on fiber assignment are the ones where I can experience some part of the raw data process.

Any advice for aspiring scientists?
Either failure or success, it can be a stepping stone for the next step.

Finally, what do you do for fun?
Reading books. Rather than reading fast, I prefer slow reading and enjoying each line, which makes me feel like having conversation with author. And, recently, (I’m not sure if I should say “because of“ or “thanks to” COVID19, but anyway) I started a couple of online book clubs with some old friends. After reading one chapter of the same book every week or every two weeks, we regularly meet online and discuss anything related to the chapter. You may want to try this as well. It is really fun!

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
Executive Coordinator for NSF’s NOIRLab Mid-Scale Observatories / Kitt Peak Directors office.

Where were you born?
Florida

Where do you live now?
Tucson, Arizona

What do you do as part of DESI?
I provide administrative support including planning of DESI reviews and collaboration meetings, logistics, lodging and safety support along with procuring miscellaneous supplies as needed for the Kitt Peak DESI team.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
The most interesting thing is interacting with people of all cultures, backgrounds and skill sets. I feel very honored and privileged to be able to work on the beautiful, magical Tohono O’odham land.

What do you do for fun?
I enjoy remote camping and exploring the deserts and forests of Arizona with my husband and three (adult!) kids.

What is your role in the DESI project?
I’m involved in the Milky Way Survey, where I contribute to the target selection and the definition of the Backup program, currently lead the MWS Visual Inspection efforts, and help out as a DESI observer. One of my roles was to work on the target selection of white dwarfs, which DESI is observing as secondary flux standards (white dwarfs are usually very blue, and have relatively simple and well understood spectra. Well, most of them).  Within DESI, I’m probably the person with the lowest redshift: my science interests are stars in the solar neighborhood, in particular within 100pc.

Where were you born? Where do you live now? What are the interesting places that standout that your work has taken you to?
I was born and grew up in Berlin. One of the first questions I get asked is “which part”: West Berlin. During the cold war, it was pretty much the same as living on an island. Now I’m settled in the Midlands in the UK, which are very beautiful. That is, once the Sun comes out. I love being at observatories. All of them. Each and every one of them is very different: The views over the Arizona desert from Kitt Peak are just stunning (and their food is very nice).  Paranal is the true definition of desert, and the platform with four VLTs, one of them firing a quad AO laser, seems straight out of a science fiction movie. La Palma has some of the most varied landscapes (words can’t capture what it feels being on the rim of the Caldera). And being chased by wild boars in a moonless night at Calar Alto stands out as a memory.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
Three very different aspects come to my mind. I really enjoy working together with so many amazing people from all over the world and of all ages, that have such an enormous range of skills and knowledge. Thanks to them, I learn something new every day.  Then there is the huge satisfaction of answering a scientific question, pushing the boundary of our knowledge just that one step further. And finally, the day-to-day work is just great fun. I’m a data junkie, and with the rapidly growing number of ground and space-based photometric and spectroscopic surveys, there is no end to discovering new exciting things out there in the Universe.

Any advice for aspiring scientists?
Find out what you are good at, sharpen those skills, and then make good and constant use of them. Just like you would do when learning to play an instrument, or practice some sport. Keep questioning the things you think you know. Read a lot of papers and listen to a lot of talks spanning a wide range of topics. Look out for that odd small inconsistency in your data (or equations), turn it into a question, and then try to find an answer.

Finally, what do you do for fun?
Hey, astronomy is a lot of fun. But so is cycling, climbing, cooking, traveling, and spending time with friends and family.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a third year PhD student at Durham University, working on red quasars within the Galaxy Quasar Physics working group. Quasars are high redshift objects that tend to be very blue, but there is a small but important subset that show much redder colours (“red quasars”). Our group at Durham are very interested in these red quasars because we have found fundamental differences in the radio properties of red quasars, compared to their blue counterparts. We are excited to explore reddened quasars within DESI.

Where were you born?
I was born in Yorkshire in the UK, but grew up down South in in Berkshire so never got the accent!

Where do you live now?
I now live in Durham UK, close to the University. Durham is a beautiful city and I love walking by the river.

What do you as part of DESI? 
Within DESI I am studying the diversity of quasars and in particular dust-reddened quasars. I have a secondary target program that has been targeting reddened quasars that may have otherwise been missed by the nominal QSO selection. I am also a member of the ECS committee within DESI. The ECS committee organises monthly ECS meetings and plans pre-meeting ECS activities such as networking events and data tutorials.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about DESI ?
I love being connected to people within the collaboration from all over the world. I have already learnt so much from being part of DESI and have met so many interesting people. In my work I enjoy exploring new datasets, trying to make connections and understanding new results. I particularly enjoy looking at different exotic quasar systems that DESI has been observing such as broad absorption line quasars and reddened quasars.

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
Never give up and never think you are not good enough. Sometimes you might wonder whether there is an easier path than academia, but ask yourself if there is anything as enjoyable as exploring the Universe!

What do you do for fun?
I like going to the pub with my friends—and Durham is not short on great pubs! I also enjoy giving public science talks and going to music festivals.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a graduate student at the Ohio State University working with Klaus Honscheid and Ashley Ross. I have primarily focused on DESI’s fiber positioner robots which I have a long history with stretching back to my time as an undergraduate at the University of Michigan.

Where were you born? Where do you live now?
I was born in Pontiac, Michigan on the north side of Metro Detroit. A fun fact is that the car company Pontiac (now defunct) is named after the city which in turn was named after Pontiac, a chief of the Ottawa people. I now live in Columbus, Ohio.

What do you do as part of DESI?
I have been working with DESI’s fiber positioner robots since 2016. My work has been a good mix of writing software, running hardware, and thinking a lot about how the robots move, including calibration and individual quirks. When I moved to Ohio State the scale of my work grew and I developed the software interface between the Instrument Control System and the Focal Plane System. Through the commissioning campaign I was hard at work with the rest of the focal plane team in operating the focal plane, addressing operational quirks, and improving the operational efficiency when using the focal plane.

Most recently I have become interested in the creation of the clustering catalogues from DESI data. DESI views the universe in its own unique way, creating a characteristic fingerprint in its data. When trying to extract cosmological information from DESI’s observations it is important to understand and take out effects that arise from DESI’s hardware and observing strategy. This way we can make conclusions on the underlying universe rather than just what DESI saw.

What is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
It is exciting to work on such an amazing instrument. DESI’s 5,000 positioner robots are a complex system to work with but they enable us to map galaxies on a scale never done before. Another great feature of DESI is that its size requires a large collaboration of vibrant people to learn from and interact with!

Any advice for an aspiring scientist?
I am still a young scientist myself but learning to ask questions is a skill that I am still developing and wish I had developed earlier. There should be no shame in not knowing something. Also asking a question can dramatically increase the value of reading a paper or listening to a talk.

What do you do for fun?
When I get the time, I love to go hiking; both on day hikes and multi-day hikes. When I do not have time, I go for walks instead. More often though I spend my time reading, enjoying some music, or experimenting in the kitchen.

What is your role in the DESI project?
I am the co-chair of the Cosmological Simulations Working Group, which means I help organize the efforts to produce simulations of the maps of galaxies that DESI will make.  These simulations help us figure out the ingredients that went into the early universe, even though we can only look at the final product—the galaxies today.  It’s kind of like trying to figure out the ingredients of a cake by tasting it: you can make a good guess based on the flavors, but if you really want to know if you got the recipe right, you have to try to bake it yourself and see if it comes out the same.  That’s what we do, thousands of times over, with our simulations.

Day-to-day, I write and run simulations and tools to help the DESI collaboration use the data.  I write papers about the simulation techniques and tests we come up with to show that our simulations are high enough quality to match the amazing data being delivered by the DESI observations.

Where were you born? Where do you live now? What are the interesting places that standout that your work has taken you to?
I was born in Virginia, USA, grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs, and currently live in NYC.  I was always interested in astronomy, but I sort of stumbled into studying it in undergrad after taking an introductory course.  When I got to the cosmology courses, I was hooked!

Astronomy has given me many amazing travel opportunities, starting with Tokyo for an undergrad summer research project.  Since then, I’ve been to conferences in Munich and Lisbon, and a summer school in Chile—that’s the Chilean summer, so I got to dodge the North American winter!  I’ve gotten to visit observatories in the German Alps and the Chilean desert—the latter was really special, because it’s one of the darkest observing sites in the world, and you can see the Magellanic Clouds since it’s in the southern hemisphere.  The Magellanic Clouds are a pair of satellite galaxies that orbit our galaxy; I had written my undergrad thesis on them, but had never seen them myself until that trip to Chile.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
I work on cosmological simulations, which are computationally demanding and require supercomputers to run.  I love the challenge of squeezing every last ounce of performance out of a supercomputer, especially when doing so helps us learn something about the universe.

Any advice for aspiring scientists?
Astronomy is full of opportunities to combine your interests. Interested in astronomy and earth science?  You can study exoplanet atmospheres. Astronomy and machine learning?  There’s gravitational lens identification in telescope images.  Astronomy and high-performance computing? Cosmological simulations (that’s me!). These are just a tiny fraction of the interdisciplinary possibilities!

And don’t be afraid to challenge yourself—as an undergrad, I knew computer science came more naturally to me than astrophysics.  But studying astrophysics has proven rewarding exactly because it was challenging.  Doing something challenging is often where we have the biggest opportunity for learning and growth.

Finally, what do you do for fun?
In pre-COVID times, I did tango dancing and rock climbing.  These days, I like to explore the many parks of NYC on foot, and when the weather keeps me inside, I like to play video games and dream up the latest plot twist for my Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

What is your position or role in the DESI project?
I am a PhD student working with my supervisor Lado Samushia from Kansas state university mainly involved in Galaxy & quasar clustering working group.

Where were you born and where do you live now?
I was born in Beijing, spent my college time at Nanjing and now live in Manhattan, Kansas. Of course I feel most at home in Beijing but I am getting used to life in this peaceful and friendly small town in the Midwest.

What are the interesting places that standout that your work has taken you to?
Before starting graduate school, I got a chance to travel to Canary island, which is in the Atlantic Ocean, for a cosmology summer school. The night there is so dark and mysterious. I grew up in a big city and I have never seen such a clear but starry sky. I am looking forward to visiting Kitt Peak through a DESI related trip someday.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about your job?
As a DESI member, I have the opportunity to work with top groups from all over the world and it’s really exciting to see effort from collaboration members pushing the project forward. Personally, I enjoy extracting physics information for huge datasets. There are different ways to analyze DESI data and you can always find something new. It is interesting to gradually unveil the mystery of the universe.

Any advice for aspiring scientists?
Find your research interest, keep moving forward and learn coding.

Finally, what do you do for fun?
I used to play piano but I don’t have one here. I do photography, hiking and gaming. Dota2 will be a good topic but not League of Legends.

What is your role in the DESI project?
I am the lead on a key science goal of DESI, the selection of the biggest Bright Galaxy Sample (BGS) to date which aims to measure the positions to 20 000 000 galaxies over 14 000 square degrees with a median redshift of z ∼ 0.2. I’m also in charge of providing the Survey Validation BGS targets. I’m an active member of the BGS and target selection working groups.

My main work involves the construction of the BGS target catalogue for DESI and for this I use the Legacy Surveys Imaging data. Efficient target selection is central to achieving the scientific goals of BGS. I implemented a new way to do star-galaxy classification exploiting a combination of GAIA’s compact point spread function (PSF) and model magnitudes from the Legacy Surveys (LS) pipeline TRACTOR. My work also involves the assessment of the target catalogue using other datasets such as SDSS and GAMA galaxies, as well as mock galaxy data like the MXXL light-cone catalogue. My work also focuses on galaxy clustering analysis and mitigation of systematics.

Where were you born? Where do you live now? 
I was born and raised in Colima, Mexico, a beautiful Mexican state with two volcanoes and nice beaches. Since 2017, I live in the beautiful city of Durham, UK. Famous for its almost 1000 years old Cathedral, and for being the filming place of some of the Harry Potter movies.

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about DESI?
I guess the most exciting thing is the opportunity to unveil the mysteries of our Universe with one of the most ambitious surveys of the time as DESI is. But, beyond that astonishing thing, is the fact that there’s no recipe for many things, and so you have the opportunity to be the first in creating this new knowledge. For instance, building the BGS target catalogue, I have to come up with new ways to identify spurious objects or fake galaxies. For this effort, besides the data analysis I normally do, I found some motivation to dip into web development and create an interactive webpage to carry visual inspection of the Legacy Surveys Imaging.

Any advice for aspiring scientists?
Quoting Coldplay, “nobody says it was easy…” but hey, you definitely will enjoy the road, especially when you do what you like. Don’t be afraid to be wrong or to not know things, as Richard Feynman used to say “I have approximate answers and possible beliefs, different degrees of certainty about different things but I am not absolutely sure of anything, and in many things, I do not know anything about it …”

Finally, what do you do for fun?
I occasionally do outdoor games and sports. I like to play table tennis and someday I would like to practice some real tennis. I like coding for fun and to learn new programming tools. I am a bit of a foodie person, so I like to try new dishes and also like to cook occasionally. But the thing I do enjoy the most is playing with my son.

Anything else you’d like to share ?
Yes. Thank you, DESI! Thanks to this collaboration I’ve learned plenty of things and meet wonderful people on the road. The experience I’ve gained with DESI opens many doors in my career, and that’s something I will always be grateful for.

What is your role in the DESI project?
I work on the large-scale clustering patterns of galaxies and quasars, and how we can learn about cosmology from these measurements, in particular how dark energy has been changing the expansion history of the Universe. I’m especially interested in developing new types of these analyses based on ”voids” in the galaxy distribution. But right now I’m also learning about the details of observing galaxy spectra while contributing to the visual inspection effort of early data, and preparing for my first remote observing run later in the year.

Where were you born? Where do you live now? 
I was born in Delhi, India. I live in Portsmouth, in the UK. Work took me to the wonderful far north of Europe, in Helsinki, where I worked as a postdoc for two years and where the sea would freeze over in the winter—but the most interesting place has to be a safari game reserve in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa, which was the venue for a week-long cosmology conference I once attended!

What would you say is the most interesting or exciting thing about DESI?
The most exciting feeling as an astronomer is that brief eureka moment when you solve some interesting problem, and for a short time you get to feel that you are the only person in the world who knows the answer to a question that lots of people might be interested in… but these are pretty rare! More commonly, the best thing about it is the opportunity to interact with really clever, motivated and interesting students and colleagues every day.

Any advice for aspiring scientists?
Science is tough, but it is extremely rewarding so it’s worth sticking at it. Try to work with and learn from as many people as you can—it’s a collaborative effort!

Finally, what do you do for fun?
I like to say I’m a rock climber and mountaineer. The truth is that I haven’t been able to do any serious climbing for a long time, because work and kids and other things have taken up my time, but it’s still an important part of my identity! Nowadays (at least, pre-Covid) I enjoy playing squash instead.