In Fall 2024, CIERA was thrilled to serve as host and local co-organizer for a slate of programming from the Discovery Alliance for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory‘s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST-DA). Running from October 21 – 25, these meetings included the Data Science Fellowship Program (DSFP), Catalyst Symposium and Catalyst + DSFP Hack Day, LSST-DA Institutional Members Meeting, and the LSST-DA Board of Directors Meeting. Northwestern was chosen to host in part due to CIERA members’ extensive involvement in LSST-DA programs and Rubin Observatory science.
Launched in 2016, DSFP is an innovative training program designed to position graduate students as future leaders who can meet the scientific challenges posed by large astronomy datasets – particularly those anticipated from LSST. The two-year program consists of six one-week “schools”, each at a different host institution. 19 Fellows attended the Fall 2024 sessions at Northwestern. CIERA Professor Adam Miller serves as the Director of DSFP and Bryan Scott, DSFP Postdoctoral Fellow at CIERA, led local programing for this fall’s session.
“The DSFP is an important part of how the next generation of astronomers will be prepared for the coming era of data-driven astronomy,” said Dr. Scott. “When the Legacy Survey of Space and Time begins observing next year, we will have far more data and need to process it more rapidly than ever before. The DSFP’s structure allows us to cover core data science skills in unique scope and depth. This wll prepare fellows in diverse subfields to make discoveries with this unprecedented LSST dataset. With this session, we focused on data ethics and data visualization, which are two of the most important topics we cover since they concern how astronomers communicate their work and the impact it has on the broader community.”
While the DSFP took place in the CIERA conference room, the Catalyst Symposium ran in parallel at the Norris University Center. The Catalyst Fellowship is a postdoctoral program that identifies scholars, especially those from traditionally underrepresented groups and institutions, who will make direct contributions to the science from LSST, whether astrophysical or in the social sciences. Fellows are supported by program Mentors, software and computing resources, and the annual two-day Catalyst Symposium. This year’s Symposium, which featured research talks, workshops, and networking sessions, ran on Monday, October 21 and Tuesday, October 22.
On Wednesday, October 23, DSFP and Catalyst Fellows joined forces for a “Hack Day” that took over CIERA spaces. “For the first time ever, meetings for the LSST-DA were colocated at CIERA allowing for interactions across the LSST community,” said Prof. Adam Miller. “This culminated in a joint hack session where computer scientists, social scientists, and astronomers collaborated to work on and solve new problems in an interdisciplinary fashion. Following the initial hack, several of these projects are now being developed by the LSST-DA participants.”
CIERA members were also happy to provide logistical support for the LSST-DA Board of Directors Meeting, held at CIERA on October 23, the LSST-DA Institutional Members Meeting, held in Norris on October 24, and a number of social events for the LSST-DA community. Like CIERA, the LSST-DA is committed to advancing transformative breakthroughs in astrophysics. When the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile is completed in 2025, the ten-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time will officially commence. The LSST will collect nearly 1000 images of every star and galaxy over half the sky, producing the widest, deepest, and most complete map of the Universe.
Stay tuned for a first look at Rubin images in 2025.