ZTF Faces

Rita Abani

Visting Undergrad Research Program Fellow, Caltech

Where was your starting point and how did you discover astronomy?

I was born in Hyderabad, a city in South India, often referred to as the ‘City of Pearls’. It is famous for a lot of things, but what stands out is the food; biryani and kebabs!

I am pursuing my integrated BS-MS dual degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, India. My VURP tenure at Caltech is a part of my master’s thesis project on Quantum machine learning applied to time-domain astronomy.

How did you discover ZTF?

An idea emerged during the lockdown when I had been working on a Quantum machine learning model to classify SDSS DR16 data. Upon watching Dr Graham’s lectures at the ZTF summer school, I contacted him and an idea to apply Quantum computation for real-bogus classification of ZTF data emerged.

What are you playing with in the ZTF playground?

I am pursuing my master’s thesis project under the guidance of Professor Matthew Graham on deploying hybrid Quantum Classical Machine Learning models on ZTF data. The data encompasses light curve stacks that need to be filtered as real or bogus. Professor Graham has secured an Amazon Web Services grant to execute our model on Amazon’s fleet of QPUs as well.

Where do you want to steer your rocket in the future?

I wish to expand my objectives and work on other applications of quantum hardware in astronomy, especially building ultra precise and miniaturized sensors for radio astronomy. I am quite fascinated after reading about the advent of ‘Astrophotonics’, a relatively new but highly interdisciplinary area. I wish to pursue higher studies and become a professor.

If you were not an astronomer, what would you be?

If not an astronomer, I would have loved to be an archaeologist or a poet. I have enjoyed both history and literature alike, it always felt like some kind of teleportation!

A book that shook your worldview?

I recall reading ‘Twilight in the Land of Nowhen’ by Nury Vittachi back at school. Despite being science fiction, something about the plot really shook me. The narrative revolves around a boy who lives 3 seconds ahead of the world. As erudite or fascinating it might sound, it did come with a lot of disadvantages and with a lot of morals hinting towards how we must often slow down, hinting at the perils of fast-paced life!

If you’ve had a bad day at work, you will….

I would just sip a cup of Caramel Macchiato with pure butter shortbread cookies!