Research Scientist

Carnegie Mellon Department of Physics has outstanding opportunities for full-time research scientists associated with the LINCC Frameworks program (https://www.lsstcorporation.org/lincc/frameworks), involving the development, testing and deployment of scalable analysis pipelines to enable science with the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

The LSST, which will be carried out by the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, is the flagship ground-based astronomical survey of the 2020s.  With an estimated start date in 2024, LSST will generate the deepest-ever, multi-color, 10-year-long movie of the southern sky, detecting 30 billion stars and galaxies and amassing 100 PB of imaging and catalog data. This is part of a trend of ever-larger and more complex astronomical imaging surveys: science is at an inflection point where the volume of data and the software infrastructure we use to analyze it can fundamentally change our understanding of the universe. The scientific reach of the LSST will be extraordinary, addressing questions such as: how did the Solar System form; what governs the birth and death of stars; how does dark matter sculpt the shape of our Galaxy; what is the nature of the dark energy that drives the expansion of our Universe?

The goal of the LINCC Frameworks project is to build analysis frameworks that can store, search, analyze and annotate data of the volume and complexity of the LSST data.  Initial implementations of the frameworks will be tested through application to precursor survey datasets prior to the start of LSST. 

The research scientist (https://apply.interfolio.com/99131) will be working with software engineers and other scientists involved in the project on development of the frameworks, working with external researchers to design and implement their analyses, and training the astronomy community to utilize these tools and software. 

These positions are part of the multi-institutional LSST Corporation LINCC Frameworks program, https://www.lsstcorporation.org/lincc/frameworks (see team listing here: https://www.lsstcorporation.org/lincc/frameworks/team).