Graduate Student

Kenneth Lin

I am a third-year Department of Energy SCGSR graduate student with interests in optical/IR instrumentation, galaxies, transients, and cosmology. I am also especially interested in using statistical techniques to analyze large survey data. I work primarily at LBNL on developing ultra-low noise, photon-counting optical/near-IR CCD detectors with Julien Guy for future spectroscopic surveys (e.g., DESI-II, Spec-S5) and on the La Silla Schmidt Southern Survey (LS4) with Peter Nugent. I graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst with a B.S. in Physics, B.S. in Astrophysics, and a...

Peter Ma

I am a first-year graduate student with a keen interest in applying Machine Learning to a range of (astro)physical challenges, including instrument design, theory/equation discovery, and observational (anomally) detection pipelines. My current work focuses on neural network-based adaptive optics for the Rubin Observatory and the development of neural compression techniques to optimize data transfer for future space-based telescopes.

I completed my undergraduate degree in Applied Mathematics at the University of Toronto. During that time, I developed real-time deep learning...

Saahit Mogan

Riley Owens

Astronomy Department

Anna Pusack

I’m a third-year grad student working with Jessica Lu on Galactic Center stellar and compact object populations. I use JWST/NIRSpec IFU spectra to find black holes in binary systems in the Galactic Center. I have experience with the JWST pipeline, spectral reduction, and data visualization.

I graduated from the University of Colorado – Boulder in 2020 where I conducted research on Parker Solar Probe data, looking specifically at dust impacts on the spacecraft to deduce properties of the near-Sun dust environment. Papers can be seen in...

Kecheng Qian

Tamojeet Roychowdhury

Hello! I'm Tamojeet Roychowdhury, a second-year PhD student in Astronomy at the UC Berkeley. I'm currently working with Prof. Jessica Lu on finding stellar-mass black holes in the Milky Way via a technique called microlensing, where the black hole acts as a gravitational lens and distorts and magnifies the light coming from a star right behind it. My work involves characterising the changes in the brightness and apparent position of the star as the lens passes in front of it, using multiple telescopes on Earth and in space! I am also starting to work on the Galactic Centre of the...

Katie Sharpe

Noah Stiegler

Noah is a second-year graduate student working to push the cutting edge of astronomical instrumentation and computation to answer big questions about planetary environments in the galaxy which may harbor life and black holes, which sit at the intersection of our two most successful but incompatible theories. He is currently working with Prof. Michael Bottom to better understand the limits of ground-based high-contrast imaging and extreme adaptive optics, used to study the environments surrounding nearby stars. Previously, he worked with Prof. Jessica Lu on improving the laser guide...

Aster Winkler