Noriaki Arima

Noriaki Arima, 1st-year Ph.D. student at the University of Tokyo. I am a member of the Tomo-e Gozen project, which is a wide-field CMOS camera. My current interest is intrinsic color/spectra diversity seen in type Ia supernovae and their origin.

Scott Anderson

Scott Anderson, Professor of Astronomy at the Univ. of Washington. My main interests are in accretion-driven phenomena, especially quasars and compact binaries. I'm the co-PI of the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey subprogram in SDSS-IV, and the Program Head for the Black Hole Mapper in SDSS-V.

My main theme has been polarimetry of AGN, which has produced the spectroscopic part of the Unified Model. I've also worked on the beaming aspect. Perhaps more importantly, my former postdoc Kishimoto and I have produced the only SEDs for the quasar central engine, using polarimetry to remove the atomic and dust features which otherwise hide most of the Big Blue Bump SEDs. I've also written critiques of AGN research, much of which seems wasted to me. Also I think I've largely falsified arguments for Seyfert 2s said to lack hidden BLRs. I'm in the physics dept at UCSB.

Carles Badenes

Carles Badenes, Associate Professor, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pittsburgh. My research interests focus on the understanding of astrophysical transients and their relationship to the final phases of stellar evolution, particularly those related to interactions in binary systems. To this end, I have worked on the analysis of large numbers of sparsely sampled radial velocity curves obtained by astronomical surveys for both identifying interesting individual systems and constraining the fundamental statistics of stellar multiplicity. I am particularly interested in the potential of SDSS-V to open new areas of discovery space in this field.

Eric Bellm

Eric Bellm, Research Assistant Professor of Astronomy, University of Washington. I am the Alert Production Science Lead for LSST Data Management as well as the Survey Scientist for the ZTF, so much of my time is spent balancing technical decisions against their scientific impacts. Scientifically I am interested in using current and future large surveys to uncover hidden populations of neutron stars and black holes in our Galaxy. Previously I have helped commission X-ray and gamma-ray instruments including NuSTAR and the balloon-borne Nuclear Compton Telescope.

Timothy Brandt

Timothy Brandt, Assistant Professor of Physics at UCSB. I am broadly interested in stars, planets, dynamics, and data. My current main research focus is high-contrast imaging and dynamical mass measurements with radial velocity and astrometry, targeting brown dwarfs, low-mass stars, and stellar remnants.

Kevin Burdge

Kevin Burdge, Graduate Student in Physics at Caltech. My current research focus is on identifying new LISA gravitational wave sources using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), and other optical surveys. The LISA gravitational wave sources I am interested in are binaries consisting of a white dwarf with another compact object companion in an orbit with a period of less than an hour. These systems are probes of common envelope evolution, white dwarf structure and evolution, accretion physics, tides in white dwarfs, and general relativity.

Sukanya Chakrabarti

Sukanya Chakrabarti, assistant professor at RIT. I am currently leading a pilot survey to look for lensed supernovae with LCO, and am interested in supernovae rates in outer disks of spirals and in dwarf galaxies, as tracers of the GW population. I have a broad background, and have worked on both theoretical (galactic dynamics, dark matter and dark sub-halos, SMGs) and observational topics (radio astronomy, variable stars, supernovae).

Dmitry (Dima) Duev

Dmitry A. (Dima) Duev, Research Scientist, Caltech. I am currently broadly interested in the application of machine/deep learning to time domain astronomy and in databases and compute infrastructure for large-scale surveys in general and ZTF in particular. I am a radio astronomer by training; I previously worked on near-field VLBI and later on Robo-AO, an LGS AO system.

Kareem El-Badry

Kareem El-Badry, 3rd year grad student at UC Berkeley. I am interested in galaxy formation (especially low-mass galaxies), and in Milky Way stellar populations. Lately, I have been trying to leverage Gaia and spectroscopic surveys to study stellar multiplicity. My thesis is focused on star formation and stellar feedback in simulations of dwarf galaxies.

Jim Fuller

Jim Fuller, Assistant Professor at Caltech. I'm a theorist with broad interests in stellar and time-domain astronomy. I have worked on tidal interactions in stars, compact binary white dwarfs, heartbeat stars, asteroseismology, stellar evolution, massive stars and pre-supernovae outbursts, and various types of transients. With ZTF/SDSS-V, I am particularly interested in finding and characterizing compact binary white dwarfs, binaries with detached black holes and neutron stars, pulsating stars, supernova postgenitor stars, and new classes of rare objects.

Matthew Graham

Matthew Graham, Research Professor of Astrophysics at Caltech. My current interests are the application of advanced statistical and computational methodologies to astronomical time series, particularly AGN and other aperiodic variables. I’m developing techniques to detect unexpected behavior associated with nonlinear processes. I am the Project Scientist for the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF).

George Helou

George Helou, Research Professor of Physics and Executive Director of IPAC at Caltech. Current interests include the search for Near-Earth Objects and other asteroids, astrophysical infrared transients, and cross-survey analysis. Past work used radio and infrared data, and ranged from the interstellar medium, its contents and physical processes to star formation, to galaxy spins and galaxy evolution. Helou is co-PI of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF).

Assistant Professor of Astronomy, Boston University. My research interests converge on using white dwarfs to study the endpoints of stars, binaries, and planetary systems. I am primarily engaged in time-series photometry of white dwarfs that pulsate, are in close binaries, or have rotational modulation from surface inhomogeneities.

I am Lynne Hillenbrand and I am interested in all topics related to young stars. These accretion/outflow systems undergo photometric and spectroscopic variations on a wide range of timescales and amplitudes. I have been involved in both low-cadence studies from the ground, some extending over a decade or more in duration, as well high-cadence and high-precision studies from space-based platforms. The variability probes different aspects of stellar phenomena (pulsations, rotation) and circmstellar phenomena (accretion, extinction). I am professor in astronomy at Caltech. \




Anna Ho

Anna Ho, 4th-year graduate student at Caltech working with Shri Kulkarni. I am interested in a rare, extreme class of stellar death: explosions powered by a central engine, an accreting black hole or a rapidly spinning neutron star. For the last half-century, these "engine-driven" explosions have predominantly been discovered using gamma-ray satellites, as long-duration gamma-ray bursts (GRBs). With the Zwicky Transient Facility, I am conducting a large-scale optical survey dedicated to finding these explosions via different avenues: optical afterglow emission, broad-lined stripped-envelope supernovae (Ic-BL SNe), and transients too fast and too luminous to be explained by conventional SN models (as in the recent extraordinary transient AT2018cow). Before coming to Caltech, I spent a year at the MPIA in Heidelberg working on data-driven approaches to stellar spectroscopy -- in particular, on a method for propagating information from a high-S/N, high-resolution survey to low-resolution, noisy spectra. I have also worked on radio studies of millisecond pulsars.

Dan Huber, Assistant Professor at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii. My main research interests are asteroseismology, exoplanets and galactic archeology using Kepler/K2/TESS and ground-based surveys. I am a steering committee member of the TESS Asteroseismic Science Consortium, the spectroscopic TESS Follow-up Observing Program, and working group co-chair within the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer science team.




David Kaplan

Mansi M. Kasliwal is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Caltech. She is interested in many facets of time-domain astronomy enabled by wide-field infrared and wide-field optical discovery engines. At this meeting, she especially looks forward to brainstorming about infrared stellar variables from the ongoing SPIRITS infrared survey, the newly commissioned Palomar Gattini-IR surveyor and soon to be commissioned WINTER surveyor.




Juna Kollmeier

Juna Kollmeier, Staff Member at the Carnegie Observatories. My scientific interests are extremely diverse ranging from planets and stars to the intergalactic medium and cosmology. I am the Director of the Fifth phase of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. I am a theorist who enjoys synthesizing observations and devising natural experiments to test current astrophysical theories over a broad range of phenomena.



Nick Konidaris

Nick Konidaris, Staff Astronomer at Carnegie Observatories. My current interest is in the design and development of optical and infrared instruments. I'm in charge of the Local Volume Mapper Instrument for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, and with a new postdoc we are working on a fiber multi-object infrared spectrograph for Magellan. I recently worked a short stint in industry where I worked on CubeSats and airborne spectrometers.





Shrinivas Kulkarni

Shrinivas ("Shri") Kulkarni, Professor of Astronomy at Caltech. My current interests are the study of explosions and Fast Radio bursts. I am the principal investigator of the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). I have wide background: radio astronomy, optical astronomy & instrumentation. My past interests include millisecond, brown dwarfs and gamma-ray bursts. From 2006-2018 I served as Director of the Caltech Optical Observatories.




Thomas Kupfer

Thomas Kupfer, Postdoctoral Scholar at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Phyiscs at UC Santa Barbara. My current interest is focussed on short period variables, in particular compact helium star binaries (detached and semi-detached) as well as pulsators. I am interested in particular interesting objects but also to understand the population of these objects. I am interested in surveys focussing on low Galactic latitudes. I am scientific lead of the ZTF high-cadence survey of fields in the Galactic Plane with high-stellar density which was done during ZTF year 1.

 

Makoto Ichiki

Makoto Ichiki, A doctoral course student under Prof. Mamoru Doi at The University of Tokyo (UTokyo), Japan. I am interested in pulsars and fast transients in the optical band, and belong to the technical/science working group of the Tomo-e Gozen project.





Maxwell Moe

Maxwell Moe is a postdoctoral research astronomer (formerly an Einstein Fellow) at the University of Arizona. Max has worked on various aspects of binary stars: their formation, evolution, Type Ia supernovae, gravitational waves from compact object mergers, and planets in binaries. He is especially interested in utilizing large datasets of eclipsing, spectroscopic, astrometric, and common-proper-motion binaries to constrain the multiplicity statistics as a function of stellar age, environment, metallicity, mass, and orbital separation. Max is currently conducting a VARiability Survey of the TriAngulum GAlaxy (VARSTAGA), the first simultaneously deep and high-cadence multi-band survey of a local group galaxy with the aim of identifying and characterizing ~10,000 early-type eclipsing binaries..



John Mulchaey

John Mulchaey, Director of Carnegie Observatories. I am primarily an X-ray astronomer. My research interests include groups and clusters of galaxies, the circumgalactic medium, and active galaxies. I have also been involved in studies of FRBs, GRBs and other transient phenomena. As Director at Carnegie Observatories, I also oversee Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.




Melissa Ness

I am based in New York City, where I hold a joint appointment as an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University and an Associate Research Scientist at the Centre for Computational Astrophysics. I also serve as a Survey Scientist for the next generation Milky Way spectroscopic component of Sloan V, the 5-million-star Milky Way Mapper (first light 2020). In my research, I use stars as tools to understand the Milky Way's formation. I am particularly interested in understanding the relationship between the ages, chemical abundances and orbital properties of stars and the stellar physics captured in stellar brightness variations over time. I am working with a number of datasets to examine our Galaxy, including GALAH, APOGEE, LAMOST, Kepler and Gaia. I am also very interested in developing sensible and efficient methodologies to extract information from data and to interpret this (high dimensional) information.

I am a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University, and a visiting research fellow at Rice University. I am a member of the NASA-TESS science team, an architect of the TESS Input Catalog, target selection coordinator for the APOGEE-2 survey in SDSS-IV, and the targeting and cadence coordinator for the Milky Way Mapper Survey in SDSS-V. My research focuses on the identification of stellar variability in large photometric data sets, and I have independently identified tens of thousands of variable stars.
 


Eran Ofek

Ben Shappee

I am an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Astronomy at the University of Hawaii. I am interested in both observational and theoretical astrophysics, currently focusing on optical surveys, the transient universe, and explosive and variable transients (supernovae, AGN, TDEs, kilonovae, ect.). I am involved in many observational projects, but most notably, I am a founding member of the All-Sky Automated Survey for Supernovae(ASAS-SN). This is the first survey to scan the entire sky for transient objects in real-time and is currently the leading discoverer of Supernovae brighter than 18th magnitude.

Maayane Soumagnac

Maayane Soumagnac, Postdoctoral researcher at the Weizmann Institute. I am interested in interacting supernovae and what we can learn about their progenitors and environment. I am currently conducting a UV and visible-light survey of ZTF type IIn Supernovae, which will help constrain their progenitor mass-loss mechanisms. My other research interests include developing algorithms for large astronomical survey: I co-lead the star-galaxy separation effort in the Dark Energy Survey as part of my PhD, and recently co-developed, with Eran Ofek, catsHTM, a tool for fast accessing and cross-matching large astronomical catalogs, which we wish to use in order to look for fast-moving objects in large surveys. In recent years, I have served as the assistant Project Scientist of the ULTRASAT satellite mission.

Johanna Teske, Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie Observatories. My current research mostly focuses on the detection of small planets via transit and radial velocity observations, as well as characterization of their host stars (particularly chemical abundances) via high resolution optical and NIR spectroscopy (e.g., APOGEE). Moving forward, the largest barrier to detecting Earth-like planets will be a better understanding of stellar variability on timescales of minutes to years, so this is also a topic of great interest to me. I am the Science PI of the Magellan-TESS survey to measure the masses, host star compositions, and system architectures of ~30 Rp <=3 Rearth transiting planets. I am a Co-I of a Carnegie-led survey of stars in the TESS Southern CVZ with APOGEE-South, and the TESS/Planets Working Group Lead for SDSS-V.

Lin Yan

Lin Yan, research astronomer at Caltech. My research interests cover a wide range of topics from high redshift galaxies to low redshift transient events. I am co-PI on a large ALMA [CII]158micron survey of 120 galaxies at z ~ 4 to 5. One of the goals is to derive z~4 [CII] line luminosity function. The major portion of my research time is currently spending on ZTF, including superluminous supernova (SLSN) and nuclear transients. I am the lead for the SLSN science from ZTF. My primary interests on SLSN are volume metric rates/luminosity functions as well as nebular phase optical and near-infrared spectroscopy. On nuclear transients, I am interested in infrared properties of TDEs (dust echoes) and the complicated relationship between changing-look AGN and TDE.




Yuhan Yao

Yuhan Yao, 1st-year graduate student at Caltech working with Shri Kulkarni. My first-year project is early observations of Type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) with the Zwicky Transient Facility. The goal is to address issues about the explosion mechanisms of SNe Ia with early colors and spectroscopy. Before graduate school, I studied AGB stars with LAMOST data, studied young stars with APOGEE data, and constructed a disk-irradiation model to explain the optical SED of ultra-luminous X-ray sources.



Jan Van Roestel

Jan van Roestel, Postdoctoral researcher at Caltech. I'm currently working on eclipsing white dwarfs star; double white dwarfs, white dwarf brown dwarfs and white dwarf red dwarf systems, and pre-He-WD-MS (EL CVn) systems. I'm mainly interested in the populations of eclipsing white dwarfs and how they can be used to test binary population models. I'm currently working on ZTF variable star science, and have worked with PTF data. I have experience in variable star classification using machine learning methods, and have also worked on finding fast transients (t<1d) in optical surveys.