KIPAC Newsletter Spring 2025 - Fall 2025

Dear Friends of KIPAC,

Happy Fall!

This year has brought huge milestones in our scientific journey to deepen our understanding of the universe, despite very real challenges to science, innovation, and the academic community as a whole.

After more than twenty years of leadership – from incubating the original ideas to building and delivering the world’s largest digital camera to the mountaintop in Chile, to preparing to process and host the data at the Rubin US Data Facility – KIPAC, Stanford, and SLAC joined the world in celebrating the “First Look” at the universe through the incredible eyes of the 3.2 Gigapixel LSST Camera at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The results were nothing short of spectacular and we can't wait to see what the Legacy Survey of Space and Time will bring when it officially kicks off in the very near future.

It has been an exciting time for KIPAC on many other fronts, including our first year of Stanford observing time on the Magellan Telescopes, the start of operations for the Simons Observatory and SuperCDMS, and continued progress on the Phase A NASA probe mission AXIS. Our new Center for Decoding the Universe @ Stanford, a partnership between KIPAC and Stanford Data Science, is celebrating a very effective first year, which has already brought new capabilities in AI and data science and new collaborations with colleagues in computer science, engineering, and statistics.

As always, the best part of KIPAC is its members, and we are thrilled to welcome so many new postdoctoral fellows and graduate students from all over the world to join us, as well as new faculty – Oliver Philcox (Assistant Prof of Physics; member of LITP and KIPAC) joined us this fall and Josh Frieman (Associate Lab Director for Fundamental Physics and Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at SLAC) joined us in March.

Despite the challenges we face, we remain optimistic that KIPAC is incredibly well-positioned to weather the storms before us and continue to deliver amazing science and nurture a welcoming and vibrant community.  

Wishing you and yours all the best in this new academic year,

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

Congratulations to KIPAC!

KIPAC Director and faculty member Risa Wechsler was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research in astrophysics and cosmology.

Susan E. Clark

Faculty member Susan Clark was awarded the Helen B. Warner Prize by the American Astronomical Society for her seminal contributions to our knowledge of cosmic magnetism and the development of innovative observational techniques for studying the interstellar medium. She was also honored the Stanford Faculty Women’s Forum Inspiring Early Academic Career Award for creating a culture of inclusion and belonging for students and trainees at all levels.

Outreach & Engagement Manager Xinnan Du was awarded the Stanford IDEAL Honor Roll for her demonstrated commitment to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging efforts at the university.

Postdoctoral scholar Peter Marinos won first prize in Action and Impact on Campus in the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability photo contest with his photo “Star Trails at the Stanford Student Observatory.” 

The Fermi/LAT team, led by KIPAC faculty member Peter Michelson, was honored with the Giuseppe and Vanna Cocconi Prize by the European Physical Society for revolutionizing the field of gamma-ray astronomy.

KIPAC was awarded 3 Kavli Institute Collaboration Kickstarter (KICK) grants, which aim to spark innovative research projects and scholarly pursuits by bringing researchers together from two or more different Kavli Institutes. The 3 awarded projects include:

Science & Research Highlights

On June 23, 2025, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory unveiled its first science imagery — the “First Look.” The images and videos, captured in just about 10 hours of test observations, already reveal breathtaking detail: millions of galaxies, countless stars of our Milky Way, thousands of previously undetected asteroids, and stunning views of nebulae such as the Trifid and Lagoon. These early images provide a glimpse of Rubin’s upcoming 10-year Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), which will continuously scan the southern sky, creating a time-lapse view of the cosmos.

As key contributors to the Rubin project, KIPAC scientists at Stanford and SLAC — who have been working on Rubin/LSST for more than 20 years — had a special moment of celebration. An internal “First Look” watch party was held at SLAC with project leads and more than 100 scientists. In addition, a special public lecture was hosted on the Stanford campus, where attendees toured the first images and learned about Rubin’s capability for unprecedented discoveries in cosmology, Milky Way science, and transient astronomy. The event drew wide interest, attracting nearly 1000 live participants both in person and online.

In March 2025, the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration announced Data Release 1 (DR1), which includes all data acquired during the first 13 months of the DESI main survey as well as a uniform reprocessing of the Survey Validation data. The DR1 main survey contains spectra of 18.7 million objects, including galaxies, quasars, and stars, making it the largest sample of extragalactic redshifts ever assembled.

The DESI team also released new analyses based on its first 3 years of observations, mapping nearly 15 million galaxies and quasars across about 11 billion years of cosmic history. While the DESI observations alone remain consistent with the standard cosmological model (ΛCDM), the data suggest that the effect of dark energy may be gradually weakening over time when combined with other measurements such as supernovae, the Cosmic Microwave Background, and weak lensing.

Most recently, the DESI Collaboration has been awarded the 2026 Lancelot M. Berkeley – New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy by the American Astronomical Society (AAS).

Meet Our New Senior Members

Oliver Philcox

In September 2025, Oliver Philcox joined Stanford as an Assistant Professor of Physics. Oliver is a senior member of both KIPAC and the Leinweber Institute for Theoretical Physics at Stanford. Oliver was most recently a Junior Fellow in the Simons Society of Fellows and was awarded the 2024 New Horizons Prize in Physics. Oliver looks forward to building his research group focused on cosmology theory and analysis, including large-scale structure and the CMB.

Josh Frieman

In April 2025, Josh Frieman became Associate Laboratory Director for the Fundamental Physics Directorate (FPD) and Professor of Particle Physics and Astrophysics at SLAC. Josh is a distinguished cosmologist who has made extensive contributions to our understanding of dark energy, dark matter, and the evolution of the universe — including foundational work on the accelerating universe and on many of today’s key probes: strong and weak lensing, supernovae, large-scale structure, and photometric redshifts.

In March 2025, Josh Shiode joined KIPAC as our new Managing Director. Josh joins us most recently from the DOE Office of Science, where he was a Senior Advisor and Chief of Staff, serving under then Director Asmeret Asefaw Berhe. Josh received a PhD in astrophysics from UC Berkeley in 2013 and subsequently worked in various roles advocating for science and technology policy in Washington, DC, including as part of the DOE Office of Science National Labs complex.

Current KIPAC Member, Ann Wang was awarded a 2025 Panofsky Fellowship for her work to advance a next-generation ultrasensitive dark matter detector for XLZD, the successor to LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ). The Panofsky Fellowship, named after SLAC's founder and first director Wolfgang K. H. "Pief" Panofsky, recognizes exceptional early-career scientists who would most benefit from the opportunity to do their research at the lab and provides generous funding for five years of research at SLAC. 

New Postdoc Fellows

Rebecca Chen has joined KIPAC as a Brinson Fellow, after completing her PhD at Duke University. Her research focuses on using Type Ia supernovae as precise distance indicators to trace cosmic expansion history and to better understand the nature of dark energy.

Ani Chiti

Ani Chiti has joined KIPAC as a Brinson Fellow, after completing his PhD at MIT and a postdoctoral position as the Inaugural Brinson Fellow at the University of Chicago. His research focuses on using observations to map and characterize the ancient components of our Galaxy, to understand the distribution of dark matter on small-scales, and the formation of stars, elements, and galaxies in the early universe.

Jesse Han

Jesse Han joined KIPAC as a Stanford Science Fellow after earning his PhD in astrophysics from Harvard University. His research focuses on the dynamics of stars in the Milky Way's halo and the Large Magellanic Cloud to probe dark matter and black holes. At Stanford, he will continue to explore the nature of galactic dark matter using data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument, the Magellan telescopes, and the upcoming Roman Space Telescope.

Aya Keller

Aya Keller joined KIPAC this year as a Van Bibber Fellow after completing her PhD at UC Berkeley. Her research focuses on the search for dark matter axions with an experiment operating at temperatures just above absolute zero, relying on advanced quantum sensor technology.

Noah Sailer

Noah Sailer has joined KIPAC as a Porat Fellow after completing his PhD at UC Berkeley, and holds a joint appointment as a Stephen Hawking Advanced Fellow at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on developing robust methods to measure and interpret cosmological data from both Cosmic Microwave Background surveys (e.g., the Simons Observatory) and large-scale structure surveys (e.g., DESI and LSST).

Jean Somalwar

Jean Somalwar is joining us in a joint position as Kavli Fellow at KIPAC and as Multi-RAPTOR Fellow at UC Berkeley after completing her PhD in astrophysics at Caltech. Her research focuses on novel probes of massive black holes in order to understand how supermassive black holes form and grow. She primarily focuses on time-domain, multi-wavelength observations to identify and characterize massive black holes.

Beatriz Tucci

Beatriz Tucci is joining us as a joint LITP-KIPAC Fellow after completing her PhD in the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Germany.  She will be working on theoretical modeling of large-scale structure to probe fundamental physics and on AI/ML techniques including simulation-based inferrence.

Several other fantastic scientists have also joined us recently as KIPAC Fellows and SLAC Research Associates. These include Chris Byrhol, John Franklin Crenshaw (KIPAC Rubin Fellow), Alex Droster, Narayan Khadka (Rubin Observing Specialist), Shun-Sheng Li (KIPAC Rubin Fellow), Aditi Pradeep (SLAC Research Associate), Rui “Ray” Shi, and Tanvi Wamorkar (SLAC Research Associate).

Inspiring the Public and Future Generations

KIPAC is proud to continue offering a wide range of educational opportunities and sharing the latest discoveries in astrophysics with K-16 students, families, and the general public. In the past several months, in addition to our regular programming — public lectures, stargazing nights, SPINWIP, and Noches Astronómicas—we highlight two major milestones:

KIPAC received Stanford’s Office for Community Engagement Impact Fund to partner with the East Side Union High School District (ESUHSD), which serves nearly 25,000 under-resourced students across 19 schools. This grant supports field trips to Stanford, guest lectures in classrooms, and participation in district science and career events, directly engaging hundreds of ESUHSD students in STEM learning and career exploration.

The “KIPAC + Friends” Community Day in April 2025 was a huge success! Building on the 20th anniversary Community Day, this year’s event celebrated “space” with 9 Stanford STEM departments (including Aerospace Engineering and Materials Science) and 3 external partners (NASA, SETI Institute, UC Observatories). Thanks to the leadership of the organizing committee (Xinnan Du, Linda Xu, Tonya Peshel, Phil Mansfield, Maya Belezney, and León Garcia) and the dedication of 170+ volunteers, the 4-hour event featured around 30 hands-on activity stations and 11 short lectures across STEM fields. It drew more than 7000 attendees — a record in many ways!

We have an exciting lineup of events coming this fall and look forward to seeing you there. Want to be notified when we have an event scheduled? Sign up for the KIPAC outreach mailing list and we will be touch!

Community Day Demo

Congratulations to the New PhDs

Sidney Mau

Sidney Mau worked with Prof. Pat Burchat on using weak gravitational lensing to probe the cosmological content and evolution of the Universe. He developed simulations and studied methods to calibrate and improve galaxy shape measurements. Sidney is continuing his research as a postdoctoral associate at Duke University.

Guillem Megias i Homar

Guillem Megias i Homar worked with Prof. Steven Kahn on developing and commissioning the Active Optics System of the Rubin Observatory. He also explored novel methods for detecting ultra-fast transients in Rubin’s LSST. Guillem has joined Caltech as a Millikan Fellow.

Anthony Flores

Anthony Flores worked with Prof. Steven Allen to better understand the thermodynamic and chemical evolution of galaxy clusters. Using X-ray observations of the hot intracluster medium, he analyzed many of the highest redshift galaxy clusters known to determine how various processes affected their early growth. Anthony will expand the scope of this work as a postdoctoral researcher at Rutgers University.

Drew Ames worked with Prof. Dan Akrib on LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ), an experiment designed to directly detect dark matter. He characterized key sources of instrumental background from low-energy electrons and krypton, as well as explored “doping” the xenon with molecular hydrogen to increase LZ’s sensitivity to lower-mass dark matter particles. Drew will be working on liquid argon detector development for gamma-ray astrophysics at Northeastern University.

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