Announcements

The group meetings schedule can be found below.

Research Projects

DES

The Dark Energy Survey (DES) is an optical-NIR imaging survey that uses a 570-Megapixel camera on the 4-meter Blanco Telescope in Chile to cover 5000 deg2 of the southern sky. The primary science goal of DES is to understand the accelerating expansion of the universe through combined measurements of supernova, large-scale stucture, weak lensing, and galaxy clusters. The rich dataset from DES also enables studies of dark matter, galaxy evolution, and transient science.

LSST

The Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) is a next-generation optical-NIR imaging survey on the Vera C. Rubin Observatory at Cerro Pachon in Chile. LSST will use a 3.2-Gigapixel camera and an 8.4-meter primary mirror to cover ~18,000 deg2 of sky. Over its 10 year mission, LSST will produce a "movie" of the universe by imaging the entire visible sky every 3 nights. The LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) hosts the study of dark energy with LSST.

SPT

The South Pole Telescope (SPT) is a 10-meter telescope operating at the geographical South Pole, designed to measure the temperature and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at mm/submm wavelengths. The high angular resolution and low noise level of SPT allows unprecedented measurements of CMB lensing and galaxy clusters. SPT and DES observe the same area of sky, which enables joint analyses of the two data sets.

CCD Development

Silicon charged-coupled devices (CCDs) have been the primary detector for astronomical observations for the last 30 years. While CCD technology is mature, it is far from stagnant. We work at the interface of hardware and software to improve the performance of these detectors for applications in future cosmic surveys.

Deep Skies

Deep Skies brings together experts in astronomy and artificial intelligence to explore the mutual benefits of large-scale data analysis for both fields. The Deep Skies team is specifically interested in the advent of advanced algorithms for data-intensive research in astrophysics and cosmology.


DELVE

The DECam Local Volume Exploration (DELVE) Survey is a community survey program to observe the entire southern sky with DECam. DELVE uses observations of the smallest and faintest galaxies to understand the mechanisms governing galaxy formation and the fundamental physics of dark matter.



Publications & Products

Most of our publications can be found on the ADS with the following query:

NASA ADS

We also write software, much of which can be found on GitHub:

https://github.com/chihway
https://github.com/kadrlica
https://github.com/alexji
https://github.com/bnord


Research Group

The Survey Science Group Meetings schedule for this quarter can be found here.


Chihway Chang

Assistant Professor
Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago
Website; GitHub



Alex Drlica-Wagner

Scientist, Fermilab
Associate Professor
University of Chicago
Website; GitHub



Joshua Frieman

Professor
Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago
Website




Alexander Ji

Assistant Professor
Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago
Website; GitHub



Brian Nord

Scientist, Fermilab
KICP Associate
University of Chicago
Website; GitHub


Senior Members


Elizabeth Buckley-Geer

Senior Scientist, Fermilab
CASE Associate, University of Chicago


Aleksandra Ćiprijanović

Wilson Fellow
Fermilab


Tom Crawford

Research Professor
University of Chicago


Richard Kessler

Research Professor
University of Chicago



Postdocs


Ani Chiti

KICP Brinson Fellow
University of Chicago


Giulia Giannini

Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Chicago


Daniel Gilman

Brinson Postdoctoral Fellow
University of Chicago


Tanvi Karwal

KICP Fellow
University of Chicago


Gabriela Marques

Postdoctoral Researcher
Fermilab


Yuuki Omori

Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Chicago


Judit Prat

Postdoctoral Researcher
University of Chicago


Lucas Secco

KICP Fellow
University of Chicago


Anowar Shajib

NASA Hubble Fellow
University of Chicago


Georgios Valogiannis

Schmidt Fellow
University of Chicago


Georgios Zacharegkas

Postdoctoral Researcher
Argonne


Graduate Students



Dhayaa Anbajagane

Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago


Jazmine Jefferson

Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago


Alice Luna

Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago


Edgar Marrufo Villalpando

Physics
University of Chicago


Jason Poh

Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago


Chin Yi Tan

Physics
University of Chicago



Pierre Thibodeaux

Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago



Samantha Usman

Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago


Zhuowen Zhang

Astronomy & Astrophysics
University of Chicago


Undergraduate Students

Nathalie Chicoine

University of Chicago

Louise Gagnon

University of Chicago

Jonah Medoff

University of Chicago

Emory Murff

University of Chicago

Jon Shao

University of Chicago

Kabelo Tsiane

University of Chicago

Raul Teixeira

University of Chicago

Kihana Wilson

University of Chicago


Alumni

Diego Garza -- B.A. Physics, B.S. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2023. Went on to UC Santa Cruz as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow.
Georgios Zacharegkas -- PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2023. Went on to Argonne as a postdoctoral scholar.
Sanjana Curtis -- UChicago Postdoc, 2022-2023. Went on to NSF AAPF at UC Berkeley.
Zhuoqi (Jackie) Zhang -- BA Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2023. Went on to Stanford as a PhD student in Physics.
Aidan Cloonan -- BA Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2023. Went on to UMass Amherst as a PhD student in Astronomy.
Kai Herron -- Fermilab SULI Intern, 2023. Went on to Dartmouth as a PhD student in Physics & Astronomy.
Finian Ashmead -- Fermilab SULI Intern, 2023. Went on to University of Pittsburgh as a PhD student in Physics & Astronomy.
Burçin Mutlu-Pakdil -- NSF/KICP Postdoctoral Fellow, 2020-2022. Went on to Dartmouth as an Assistant Professor
Dimitrios Tanoglidis -- PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2022. Went on to Data Science Postdoctoral Fellow at University of Pennsylvannia.
William Cerny -- BA Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2022. Went on to Yale as a PhD student in Astronomy.
Benjamin Levine -- BA Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2022. Went on to Stonybrook University as a PhD student in Physics & Astronomy.
Cole Meldorf -- BS Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2022. Went on to Cambridge as a Masters student in Physics.
Javi Sanchez -- Fermilab Postdoc, 2019-2022. Went on to Space Telescope Science Institute as a scientist.
Susmita Adhikari -- UChicago Postdoc, 2020-2021. Went on to IISER Pune as an Assistant Professor.
Arka Banerjee -- Fermilab Schramm Fellow, 2020-2021. Went on to IISER Pune as an Assistant Professor.
Antonella Palmese -- Fermilab Postdoc, 2018-2021. Went on to UC Berkeley as a Hubble Fellow.
Yuanyuan Zhang -- Fermilab Schramm Fellow, 2016-2021. Went on to Texas A & M as a postdoctoral fellow.
Ariel Amsellem -- BA Physics, 2020. Went on to Carnegie Mellon University as a PhD student in Physics.
Sydney Jenkins -- BA Physics and Computer Science, 2021. Went on to NSF Graduate Fellowship in Physics and Astronomy at MIT.
Kiyan Tavangar -- BA Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2021. Went on to post-bacalaureate visiting research at the Simons Foundation Center for Computational Astrophyiscs.
Nora Shipp -- Ph.D. Astronomy & Astrophysics, 2021. Went on to a postdoctoral research position at MIT.
Peter Ferguson -- Fermilab URA Visiting Scholar, 2020. Went on to a postdoctoral position at University of Wisconsin, Madison.
João Caldeira -- Fermilab Postdoc, 2018-2020. Went on to become a Site Reliability Engineer at Google.
Katelyn Stringer -- Fermilab URA Visiting Scholar, 2019. Went on to become a Data Scientist at Capital One.
Sidney Mau -- BA Physics, 2020. Went on to NSF Graduate Fellowship in Physics at Stanford.
James Lasker -- PhD Physics, 2020. Went on to a postdoc at Southern Methodist University working on DESI.
Ting Li -- Fermilab Lederman Fellow, 2016-2019. Went on to Carnegie Observatories as Hubble Fellow.
Kuang Wei -- MA Physics, 2019. Went on to Strong Analytics as a Data Scientist.
Rebecca Chen -- BA Astrophysics, 2019. Went on to Duke as PhD student in Physics.
Brandon Buncher -- Fermilab SULI Intern, 2017. Went on to NSF Graduate Fellowship in Physics at UIUC.