I am an astrophysicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, making the largest two-dimensional and three-dimensional maps of the universe. These maps are an important tool for cosmology and for studying the effects of dark energy, dark matter, and fundamental physics.
I am the principle investigator (PI) for the BOSS project on the Sloan Telscope, which has made a three-dimensional map of 1.5 million galaxies and measured the size scale of the Universe to 1% precision (http://www.sdss.org/sdss-surveys/boss/). I have developed the algorithms for reliably measuring these distant galaxies in the low signal-to-noise limit.
I am currently the co-PI of the DECals sky survey that will supersede existing imaging surveys. These data will be used to construct the first generative model over such a wide-area sky survey. As these maps will contain billions of stars, galaxies, and quasars, the model parameters number in the tens of billions. I am exploring new opportunities to meet this computational challenge.
I am project scientist for the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (https://desi.lbl.gov). When it begins operations in 2018, it will construct a three-dimensional map of tens of millions of galaxies spanning the local universe to 10 billion light years.
Projects
