Colin Orion Chandler is a Project Scientist for the LSST Interdisciplinary Network for Collaboration and Computing (LINCC) Frameworks project, and serves as co-chair of the LSST Solar System Science Collaboration. Colin earned his Ph.D. in Astronomy and Planetary Science from Northern Arizona University, where he was an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, after he graduated from San Francisco State University with a BS in Physics with a Concentration in Astrophysics. He specializes in solar system science (especially cometary activity), Citizen Science, and working with large-scale archival image data. Colin founded the NASA Partner program “Active Asteroids” (http://activeasteroids.net), a Citizen Science program hosted on Zooniverse. Colin is also an experienced observer, utilizing both ground- and space-based telescopes as part of his work.
I am an LSST-DA Catalyst Prize Fellow and am currently hosting my fellowship at the DiRAC Institute. I use the latest advances in machine learning combined with large surveys to study the formation & evolution of galaxies and investigate the specific role played by Active Galactic Nuclei in this process.
Please take a look at my website to learn more about my research!
Wilson is a Software Engineer for the LINCC Frameworks team located at the University of Washington. He studied computer science at Rice University, and he has previously worked on serverless cloud infrastructure at Google. At LINCC, he is interested in the challenges of making analysis of LSST-scale data accessible. Beyond work he enjoys creative writing, west coast swing, and cozy evenings with his two cats.
Drew is a Software Engineer for the LINCC Frameworks team at the University of Washington. He completed his undergraduate studies in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. Prior to joining LINCC Frameworks, he worked at Redfin as a Senior Software Engineer and later, as an Engineering Manager – needless to say, he’s thrilled to be returning to an academic environment. Outside of work he enjoys riding bikes, playing outside with his wife and two daughters, and generally having a good time.
Max West is a software engineer for the LINCC project at the University of Washington in Seattle. She has worked in industry as a full stack developer since graduating from the University of Texas at Austin, both in the large tech firm environment of Amazon and as a member of an extremely small team at a nonprofit. She is excited to work on the large scale data and computation problems of the LSST project as well as getting to participate in an academic research environment.
Doug Branton is a Software Engineer for the LINCC project located at the University of Washington. He completed his undergraduate studies in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Washington, and afterwards worked at the Space Telescope Science Institute for five years, where he supported the Hubble Space Telescope as a member of the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) team. His research interests include the application of data science, machine learning, and software engineering to solve data-intensive challenges in Astronomy, particularly those that come along with survey-scale datasets.
Brianna Smart is a research scientist in the Department of Astronomy and DiRAC at the University of Washington. She writes software as part of the Alert Productions Data Management group in support of the Vera C. Rubin Observatoriy’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time. She earned her B.S. in Astronomy and Physics at the University of Arizona, and her M.S. and PhD from The University of Wisconsin. Brianna has a varied background in astronomy from exoplanets to stellar dynamics to diffuse ionized gas. She also enjoys any science topic related to the Magellanic Clouds. Brianna is also a member of the International Astronomical Unions Junior Member Organizing Committee, running the JM’s twitter and helping to organize events for early career astronomers.
Peter Yoachim is a staff scientist working with LSST on issues of telescope scheduler optimization and calibration. Scientifically, I work on galaxy formation and evolution, particularly using IFU observations to measure galaxy dynamics and star formation histories.
I work on understanding interactions between the Milky Way and the population of dwarf galaxies in the Local Group. This includes observing the tidal debris left behind by dwarfs as they fall onto the Galaxy, along with modeling the changing properties of dwarfs as they become satellites of the Milky Way. Much of my work uses data from the Pan-STARRS survey. I am part of the LSST Data Management System Science Team, and I support that project with analyses of the scientific requirements and expected performance of the survey.
