KIPAC Newsletter Fall 2023 - Summer 2024

KIPAC Newsletter

Fall 2023 - Summer 2024

Dear Friends of KIPAC,

We are thrilled to share highlights with you from a remarkable year at KIPAC. We kicked off the academic year with a conference celebrating KIPAC’s 20th anniversary. KIPAC members, alumni, and friends gathered to reflect and to look ahead to the next two decades. This year we also celebrated a major milestone: the delivery of the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, built at SLAC with leadership from KIPAC members, to the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. The LSST Camera holds the Guinness Book of World Records title for the “largest digital camera”, and we are preparing for an influx of data with this new window onto the sky. This summer marks the arrival of our second cohort of KIPAC post-baccaulaturate scholars, and we are celebrating our first cohort of scholars as they head off to graduate school and beyond. Read on for these and many more highlights from an amazing year!

Risa Wechsler
Director, Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology
Stanford University and SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory

Announcements

Prof. Risa Wechsler accepted an invitation to serve a second term as the Director of KIPAC. The news was announced by the former and current Vice Provosts and Deans of Research, Kam Moler and David Studdert, and SLAC Director John Sarrao, after input from an advisory committee that gathered input on Risa’s first term. As shared in the announcement, “During Risa’s first term, she strengthened the KIPAC support staff and financial model; worked with the KIPAC community to identify and support new strategic directions; secured university funding for telescope time; served as an effective advocate for much-needed faculty searches in astrophysics; fostered an exceptionally vibrant and inclusive community for all career levels; and led the community through the pandemic and through the return to campus, restoring and promoting the in-person interactions that are so important to science… With Risa’s unwavering commitment and passion for the field, KIPAC will continue to push the boundaries of our understanding of the universe and to foster a community in which students and early-career scientists can thrive. Please join us in thanking Prof. Wechsler and extending our support as she steers KIPAC to new horizons.”

SLAC Lead Scientist and CMB department head Zeeshan Ahmed has been appointed Associate Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at Stanford and SLAC.

 

Faculty member Susan Clark was awarded the 2024 Sloan Research Fellowship for her potential to revolutionize her field of study as an outstanding early-career scientist.

 

SLAC staff scientist and Panofsky Fellow Kimmy Wu was awarded the Stanford IDEAL Honor Roll for her demonstrated commitment to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging efforts at the university.

 

PhD student Josh Tong was nominated to participate in Wonderfest’s Science Envoy Program, which trains PhD students with particular science-popularization promise in skills of public outreach.

Science & Research Highlights

The 3200-megapixel Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) Camera, the largest camera ever built for astrophysics, has arrived at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile. This incredibly sensitive camera will soon be installed on the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the Rubin Observatory, where it will produce detailed images of the southern hemisphere sky for 10 years from late 2025. Congrats to all of the KIPAC members that played leading roles in making this happen, as well as to our collaborators across the world.

The Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) team has published the analysis of their first year of collected data. Conducted on the Mayall 4-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory, DESI aims to measure the effect of dark energy on the expansion of the Universe. It has created the largest 3D map of our cosmos ever constructed, with the most precise measurements to date (with an uncertainty of less than 1%). There is much more to come from DESI, including new measurements of the growth of structure and the most precise maps to date of the stars in our Milky Way.

Three KIPAC-led projects have been selected as the FY 2024 Laboratory Directed Research & Development (LDRD) projects at SLAC. LDRD projects will receive SLAC funding to make rapid contributions in new areas, tackle high-risk/high-payoff problems, and develop cross-disciplinary approaches to important scientific and technological challenges. The new LDRD projects led by KIPAC scientists include:

  • Experimental Research in Cosmic Inflation and Structure Growth (lead: Zeeshan Ahmed)
  • High-Efficiency, High-Resolution Millimeter-Wave Spectrometers for Next-Generation Cosmological Constraints (lead: Kirit Karkare)
  • Prototype & Conception Design of Components for a Fiber-fed Multi-Object Spectrograph on the Rubin Observatory (lead: Aaron Roodman)

The 2023 Particle Physics Project Prioritization Panel (P5) report, Exploring the Quantum Universe: Pathways to Innovation and Discovery in Particle Physics, has been released. Based on community input and in-depth discussions, this report charts a fiscally responsible program that covers the most promising avenues of scientific investigation for the next 10 to 20 years. KIPAC scientists are playing leading roles in projects across three science themes: “decipher the quantum realm”, “explore new paradigms in physics”, and “illuminate the hidden universe”, and SLAC programs are highlighted in the report, including Rubin/LSST, CMB-S4, several future dark matter experiments, and new initiatives in line-intensity mapping.

KIPAC Post-baccalaureate Program - Year 2

The KIPAC post-baccalaureate fellowship is now in its second year! We have received tremendous interest in our program, and have selected two scholars this year out of 170+ applications. The second cohort of scholars officially started at KIPAC in late June. They will work with KIPAC scientists on cutting-edge projects for 14 months, while participating in other professional development training and receiving career advising and graduate school application support.

In the meantime, our first cohort of scholars are wrapping up their time at KIPAC. A few of them have received offers from competitive PhD programs (such as Yale, UIUC, and Ohio State) and will be starting graduate school this fall. Best of luck to our scholars as they embark on the next stages of their journeys!

We aim to open the fellowship application again in January 2025, and would love your help in sharing this opportunity with your students and colleagues who might be interested.

Public Engagement

KIPAC is proud to continue offering a variety of educational opportunities and sharing the latest discoveries in astrophysics with K-16 students, families, and the general public. In this past year, we have offered a wide variety of outreach events, with the following highlighted:

  • Public lectures (check out past lecture recordings on YouTube):
    • Solar Astrophysics (Oct. 31, 2023)
    • Dark Energy (Feb. 26, 2024)
    • Stellar-mass Black Holes & Spin-offs (April 2, 2024)
    • Supermassive Black Holes (May 15, 2024)
    • Cosmic Microwave Background (July 16, 2024)
  • Public Stargazing Nights:
    • In person at the Stanford Student Observatory
    • Twice a quarter during the academic year
  • Stanford STEM Fest (April 2024): Science fair featuring hands-on activities
  • Noches Astronómicas: Spanish event featuring flash talks and panel Q&A
    • Oct. 2023 & April 2024 in East San Jose
  • SPINWIP: Virtual summer program in physics for high-school girls

After a short break in the summer, we will resume with a full spectrum of programs in the fall quarter! Want to be notified when we have an event scheduled? Sign up for the KIPAC outreach mailing list and we will be touch!

KIPAC@20 Conference Recap

Celebrations of KIPAC’s 20th anniversary culminated in the KIPAC@20 conference. Hosted in the Fred Kavli Building at SLAC from September 11 to 15, 2023, KIPAC@20 brought together current KIPAC members, KIPAC alumni, and colleagues from across the world.

The vibrant meeting program was broadly arranged around four scientific themes in which KIPAC has played a central role in the past 20 years, as well as topics we are most excited about for the next 20 years: Mapping the Sky, Transformative Technologies, The Extremes of the Universe, and Data-Driven Discovery.

In addition to talks and discussion sessions, conference attendees also got the opportunity to hear from KIPAC alumni about the impact the institute has had on them beyond astrophysics, to visit the LSST Camera in the clean room at SLAC, and a virtual tour of the Vera C. Rubin Observatory live-streamed from the Cerro Pachon summit in Chile. A special public event was also held, with Risa Wechsler and Dan Wilkins hosting a panel discussion on The Next Decade of Discovery with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

Special thanks to the conference organizing committee (chaired by Dan Wilkins) and KIPAC admin Martha Siegel for bringing this amazing event together, to our many generations of alumni who have made KIPAC the incredible place it is, and to the Kavli Foundation and all of our other supporters for your ongoing commitment to our institute. The program and video recordings of the conference sessions are available on the website at KIPAC@20: A conference celebrating 20 years of KIPAC. Here’s to the next 20 years!

Meet Our New Senior Members

Shawn Henderson is an Associate Staff Scientist at SLAC. Shawn did his PhD at MIT in nuclear and particle physics before changing fields to experimental cosmology as a postdoc at Cornell University. Since joining SLAC, he has been leading the development of cutting-edge instrumentation for various CMB projects, including the BICEP Collaboration, the Simons Observatory, and the NSF/DOE CMB-S4 project.

Josh Meyers has joined KIPAC as a Staff Scientist. Josh received his PhD from UC Berkeley and held positions at Stanford, Princeton, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory before arriving at KIPAC. His research focuses on cosmology with galaxy and time domain surveys (e.g., Rubin/LSST), for which he develops algorithms for analyzing images and controlling the telescope's active optics system.

Kelly Stifter has joined SLAC as a Panofsky Fellow. Kelly received her PhD in Physics at Stanford University and held a Lederman Fellowship at Fermilab before coming to KIPAC. Her work focuses on developing novel detectors for low-mass dark matter searches in collaboration with the SuperCDMS experiment and the new Dark Matter - Quantum Information Science group.

Sierra Villarreal has joined SLAC as a Software Developer. Sierra completed zir PhD at University of Pittsburgh and was a postdoc at Argonne National Laboratory previously. Ze now works as a member of the Rubin Campaign Management team and as the USDF technical coordinator for the Rubin Independent Data Access Centers.

New Postdoc Highlights

Iryna Butsky joined KIPAC as a Hubble Fellow. She uses a variety of computational techniques to study how cosmic rays and magnetic fields shape galaxies and their diffuse gaseous halos.

Wren Suess started a Hubble Fellowship at KIPAC. Her research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies, particularly using new observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. Wren is departing soon for a faculty position at the University of Colorado, Boulder; congratulations!

Christian Aganze has joined KIPAC as a Stanford Science Fellow and a Rubin Fellow after completing his PhD at UC San Diego. His research focuses on galactic archeology, constraining dark matter models and studying the structure of the Milky Way with survey data from DESI, the Rubin Observatory, and Euclid.

Jaeyeon Kim has joined KIPAC as a Kavli Fellow after completing her PhD at Heidelberg University in Germany. Her research focuses on the characterization of the matter cycle between gas and young stars, using high-resolution and multi-wavelength observations of nearby galaxies.

KIPAC in the News

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