Tom's current research focuses on studying the formation and evolution of galaxies with new numerical techniques, however, he enjoys all areas of non-linear physics which can be addressed using supercomputer calculations! His research interests span dark matter dynamics, the physics of collisionless shocks, investigating the role that cosmic rays and magnetic fields play in the formation and evolution of galaxies, modeling the formation of stars and black holes as well as turbulence, and applications of numerical general relativity.

Zeesh is an observational cosmologist who studies the relic blackbody radiation of the early universe, called the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), to understand the origin and composition of the Universe and find answers to some perplexing questions in fundamental physics. With CMB team members at KIPAC, SLAC and Stanford, Zeesh builds CMB cameras and analyzes data generated by them. He is a member of the BICEP/Keck, South Pole Telescope (SPT-3G), Simons Observatory and CMB-S4 scientific collaborations. His current research interests include experimental bounds on cosmic inflation from CMB polarization, searches for dark matter using CMB data, and development of next-generation CMB camera readout technologies. Recent hardware development in SLAC’s CMB lab, with a focus on GHz superconducting microresonators, has cross cutting applications in CMB imaging, X-ray and particle detection, and beyond-SQL measurements.

Together with Tom Shutt, Dan works on the LUX and LZ dark matter experiments to search for dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs. The detectors use liquid xenon as a target medium in a time projection chamber, or TPC. The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is currently operating a 250-kg target in the former Homestake gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Preparations are underway at SLAC to design and build the 7-ton successor, known as LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ). The group is involved in many aspects of data analysis, detector design, xenon purification, control andreadout systems, and detector performance studies.

Steve Allen leads the X-ray Astronomy and Observational Cosmology (XOC) group, which has interests spanning the astrophysics of galaxies and galaxy clusters, accretion onto black holes, studies of dark matter and dark energy, and the development of detectors for future X-ray satellite missions. More information on the group and its members can be found here.

Chelsea is coordinating an effort to search for wave-like axion dark matter over a wide range of masses. The detectors, known as haloscopes, look for the axion conversion to a photon in a strong magnetic field. She is a leader in both the DM Radio collaboration and the Axion Dark Matter eXperiment. The two experiments are optimized to search for axions in unique, complementary mass ranges. Chelsea is particularly interested in developing novel axion receivers to increase the axion scan rate and cover the largely unexplored parameter space. The group will interface with DMRadio and ADMX collaborations as well as those working on quantum devices that can be leveraged in axion searches. On ADMX, there is a greater focus on analysis on incoming data. On DMRadio, there is greater emphasis on hardware design for upcoming experiments. She also informs a group to develop RFSoC technology for axion searches.

Roger has broad interests in astrophysics, cosmology and physics. His current research interests in high energy astrophysics include interpreting Fast Radio Bursts (FRB) as a consequence of magnetar (neutron stars with up to a 100 Giga Tesla magnetic field), modeling the black hole shadow observed in M87 by the EHT as a ergomagnetosphere that drives away the infalling gas through an ejection disk, explaining the highest energy cosmic rays as being accelerated at accretion shocks surrounding nearby clusters of galaxies and developing “magnetoluminescent” mechanisms of the most rapid particle acceleration in cosmic sources. His cosmological interests include using the microwave backgrounds and large surveys to make a largest scale map of the actual universe we inhabit and exploring the potential of FRB to make competitive cosmological measurements. His main physics interest centers on accounting for biological homochirality using spin-polarized cosmic rays.

Pat and her research group are major contributors to the Legacy Survey of Space & Time (LSST) Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC).  DESC is preparing to explore cosmology and fundamental physics with the massive astronomical data set that will come from Rubin Observatory, which is close to the completion of construction in Chile. Pat’s group is focused on the challenges that need to be overcome to do both precise and accurate measurements of "weak gravitational lensing". Her group is using analytic calculations, simulations, modeling, and analysis of existing astronomical images to thoroughly understand and then correct potential systematic biases. Current projects include detailed understanding and modeling of the correlations in the point spread function across the very large field of view of the Rubin telescope, and the understanding and reducing negative impacts of blended objects.

David's current projects are focusing on the development of scientific analyses for the Dark Energy Survey (DES). The DES is an exciting, broad ground-based optical survey which started taking data in 2013. It is measuring cosmological parameters through the use of gravitational lensing, studies of clusters and large scale structure of galaxy populations. Presently David's work is aimed at optimizing the performance of instrument operations and data reduction, and development of scientific analysis techniques using​ simulations and the survey data set. 

Eric's primary work is on doing observational cosmology with the LSST DESC.  He is currently co-leading development of the software and data analysis infrastructure for photometric redshift calibration using LSST Data.  LSST will observe about 20 billion galaxies with its six color filters. This is far more than can be observed spectroscopically, so developing, calibrating and validating methods to use the LSST color data to estimate the redshifts of these Galaxies will greatly contribute to our ability to do cosmology with the LSST Data.   Eric worked with the Fermi-LAT collaboration for years, and has many interests in gammay-ray, multi-wavelength and multi-messager astronomy.

Susan is broadly interested in astrophysical magnetism and the physics of the interstellar medium (ISM), from diffuse gas to dense, star-forming regions. Susan’s research tackles open questions like the structure of the Milky Way’s magnetic field, the nature of interstellar turbulence and the multi-phase ISM, and the role of magnetism in star formation. These big questions demand multiwavelength observations and new data analysis techniques. Susan and her group decipher the magnetic ISM using a combination of theory and observation. Data-wise, the group uses a wide range of tracers including gas line emission and absorption, polarized dust and synchrotron emission, starlight polarization, Zeeman splitting, and Faraday rotation. Susan is involved in a number of current and future telescope projects, and leads several efforts to maximize the science return from sensitive measurements of Galactic millimeter-wavelength emission made by cosmic microwave background experiments like the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and the Simons Observatory (SO). Please see Susan's website for more on the Cosmic Magnetism and Interstellar Physics group.

Josh carries out theoretical and observational research in cosmology on topics including dark energy, dark matter, and inflation, using tools such as large-scale structure, weak and strong gravitational lensing, and type Ia supernovae, with increasing focus on the application of machine learning to the analysis of cosmic surveys such as the Dark Energy Survey (a project he co-founded and led) and Rubin LSST.

You can find a sampling of recent research highlights here.

Peter is broadly interested in theoretical physics beyond the Standard Model, including cosmology, astrophysics, general relativity, and even atomic physics. The Standard Model leaves many questions unanswered including the nature of dark matter and the origins of the fundamental fermion masses, the weak scale, and the cosmological constant. These and other clues such as the unification of the forces are a guide to building new theories beyond the Standard Model. Peter's group are interested in inventing novel experiments to uncover this new physics.

Chao-Lin’s group use the most ancient light, the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation, emitted when the universe was in its infancy to shed light on the question of how the universe began. Currently Chao-Lin's group are involved in a number of experiments such as BICEP/BICEP2/Keck Array and have been working hard on detecting primordial B-mode polarization. His group are involved in both he design and construction of instruments as well as the data analysis and theoretical interpretation.

Noah’s current interests are directed toward developing large particle detectors with sensitivity to meV-scale excitations. Noah is the R&D coordinator for the SuperCDMS collaboration, and leads development for the single-electron sensitive HVeV detector program. He also has ongoing programs to use novel quantum materials with meV-scale bandgaps to detect small energy deposits, as well as qubit and KID-based sensors for low-energy phonon and THz photon detection. Noah is also a new PI in the QNEXT quantum institute, where he focuses on mitigating radiation effects in qubits from radioactivity by studying phonon transport in different qubit architectures.

Rebecca's research leverages the interplay of theoretical particle physics and astrophysics to investigate the fundamental nature of dark matter, and other Beyond the Standard Model physics. The theory describing dark matter remains completely unknown, and requires new search ideas to resolve its identity. Rebecca identifies novel search strategies for dark matter in astrophysical systems, and executes these searches using new theoretical calculations and the latest astrophysical datasets.

Greg's research interests are mainly in extragalactic high-energy astrophysics. This includes (1) studies of active galactic nuclei, and an associated formation and evolution of relativistic jets; and (2) studies of clusters of galaxies, and in particular the processes responsible for the heating of the X-ray emitting intra-cluster gas. Besides taking advantage of data from the Fermi Gamma-ray Observatory, Greg is involved in analysing and interpreting observations performed with NuSTAR, a recently-launched NASA satellite, sensitive in the hard X-ray band.

Adam's research centers around the formation and growth of clusters of galaxies, observations of the intracluster medium at X-ray and millimeter wavelengths, and the use of clusters as probes of cosmology. He has ties to a number of existing, planned, and notional surveys and telescopes, including the Dark Energy Survey, South Pole Telescope, Rubin LSST-DESC, ATHENA and Lynx. Adam is also generally interested in the challenge of modeling and analyzing complex data to extract as much useful information as possible.

Phil is the SLAC Deputy Director of Operations for Rubin Observatory. Phil's research interests are in observational cosmology, using gravitational lensing and machine learning to weigh galaxies and measure the expansion rate of the Universe. He is a member of the H0LiCOW, TDCOSMO and STRIDES collaborations, modeling time delay lenses in order to measure the Hubble constant, and is active in the LSST DESC Strong Lensing working group, helping design and implement its strong lensing science analysis. LSST presents astronomers with a new scale of Big Data problems, the solutions to which will necessarily involve either innovations in automated inference, or large numbers of people, or both: Phil's research is focused on strong lensing, but the Bayesian inference and AI methods he is investigating with the KIPAC students and postdocs have much wider applicability.

Glenn's main research interest is the physics of galaxy clusters, and their use as cosmological probes, with an emphasis on observations in the X-ray band. He is also involved in the development of detector hardware for future X-ray satellite missions. He is also interested in high performance computing and the use of Linux systems for scientific research, including for the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time.

Nicola is broadly interested in high-energy astrophysics, in particular short duration transients, such as solar flares and Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs). His analysis of solar flares at high energies revealed the presence of multiple acceleration components: one impulsive, associated with the fast X-ray emission occurring at the flare site, and one temporally extended, probably associated with acceleration at the Coronal Mass Ejection shock. As the new solar cycle is ramping up, and new flares are detected by Fermi-LAT, Nicola and his team hope to tackle this topics providing new insight on particle acceleration under these extreme circumstances.

As for GRBs, Nicola’s focus is on multi-messenger astronomy with the hope to detect more short GRBs in coincidence with Gravitational Wave signal from merging Neutron Stars. On the other hand, after the surprising detection of the high-energy emission from a Magnetar Giant Flare (MGF) in 2020, he also hopes to detect more events like that, which could point to a different class of short GRBs: the once associated with MGFs.

In general, his main focus is to develop new analysis techniques, performing statistically sound analysis in order to explore the extreme phenomena in the gamma-ray sky. Recently he became the principal investigator of ThreeML, a tool to facilitate data analysis between different instruments in the framework of the Maximum Likelihood. He is also part of the HAWC experiment and Co-Investigator of the recently lunched IXPE mission.

By combining observational data from galaxy surveys and the cosmic microwave background with robust theoretical predictions, Oliver’s group probes the physics of the early and late Universe. This involves a combination of theoretical work (involving the Effective Field Theory of Large Scale Structure), data analysis (using Planck and DESI data), and computation, and has led to tight constraints on the standard cosmological model and a wide variety of extensions. Oliver is particularly interested in the use of novel statistical tools, including bispectra and trispectra, to probe new physics in inflation, such as cosmological collider physics, via primordial non-Gaussianity.

Sasha’s research focuses on the nonlinear behavior of plasmas across a wide range of astrophysical environments, from the interstellar medium to the extreme conditions near black holes and neutron stars. His group develops and applies advanced numerical algorithms to investigate fundamental plasma processes such as magnetic reconnection, turbulence, pair-production discharges, and the mechanisms of coherent emission in pulsars, magnetars, and fast radio bursts. Group members study these microphysical processes in the broader context of the large-scale dynamics of relativistic magnetospheres, accretion flows and relativistic jets. Recently, Sasha has also become interested in modeling axion production and conversion in neutron star magnetospheres, as well as exploring opportunities to test relativistic plasma physics in the laboratory using intense laser–plasma interactions.

Roger is interested in a variety of topics in high energy astrophysics and cosmology. Much of Roger's group are currently focused on understanding the cosmic gamma-ray sources discovered by the Fermi Space telescope, principally pulsars and blazars. This inherently multi-wavelength question requires them to use telescopes all over the world and in space in order to assemble data on these objects and then to develop and test theoretical models to explain what we see. 

Aaron's current research focus is the study of dark energy using images from the ongoing Dark Energy Survey (DES) and Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). He is interested in studying dark energy using both galaxy clusters and weak gravitational lensing. His research group connects instrumental work, in particular active optics and wavefront measurements at DES and a program of camera-wide testing at LSST,  with cosmology measurements. For example, they are developing a new method to characterize the telescope+camera point spread function using optical data, to be part of the weak lensing data analysis at both DES and LSST.

Emmanuel Schaan is a cosmologist working at the intersection of theory and data analysis. His research consists in building innovative analysis techniques to combine large-scale structure and cosmic microwave background (CMB) data, in order to control their systematics and answer fundamental questions in physics such as the nature of dark energy and dark matter and the neutrino masses, and in extragalactic astrophysics such as how galaxies form and how they reionized the Universe.

Rafe and his group are working hard on the development and commissioning of the Vera C Rubin Observatory, a next generation ground based optical survey telescope. The LSST group at KIPAC are working both in the lab, developing the state-of-the-art technologies necessary to preserve the LSST camera’s image quality during operation and building computer simulations of the camera and telescope performance -- a  novel area being pioneered by LSST.

Together with Dan Akerib, Tom works on the LUX and LZ dark matter experiments to search for dark matter in the form of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or WIMPs. The detectors use liquid xenon as a target medium in a time projection chamber, or TPC. The Large Underground Xenon (LUX) experiment is currently operating a 250-kg target in the former Homestake gold mine in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Preparations are underway atSLAC to design and build the 7-ton successor, known as LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ). The group is involved in many aspects of data analysis, detector design, xenon purification, control andreadout systems, and detector performance studies.

Kelly's primary research interest is in developing the ultra-sensitive detectors that are required to look for low mass dark matter candidates. Together with Noah Kurinsky, she leads the DM/QIS group at SLAC, which is working to design, fabricate, operate, and calibrate superconducting sensors such as TESs, KIDs, and qubits. These devices can be used for low mass dark matter searches, and what we learn about their operation can also be used to inform the design of quantum computers. Kelly is also a member of the SuperCDMS group at SLAC, and is involved with both the installation and integration of the full-scale experiment, as well as analysis of dark matter data.

Bob has wide research interests in the field of gravitational astrophysics. Bob is interested in oscillations of accretion disks around black holes, and other signatures of very strong gravitational fields, sources of gravitational radiation, and their detection by LIGO and other facilities, scalar-tensor theories of gravitation and physics of the early universe.

Risa and her group work on a range of topics in cosmology and astrophysics, with a focus on the formation of cosmological structure in the Universe, its impact on galaxy formation, and its use in determining the nature of dark matter and dark energy. Risa's group builds and analyzes numerical simulations and develops models of galaxy formation for comparison with large observational datasets, and develops new techniques to learn about the dark side of the Universe from these data. Her group is actively involved in the largest cosmic surveys including Dark Energy Survey (DES),  the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and the Rubin Observatory's Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). They are also working actively on astrophysical probes of dark matter in the Milky Way and beyond, including precision measurements with the Via survey.