Projects
I work with my group and external collaborators on several projects involving major telescopes on the ground and in space. Furthermore, I am involved in the next generation of telescopes by contributing to their science cases. Below is a selection of larger projects that I am working on or that I am part of.
If you are interested in working with me on any of these projects, please contact me.
ALPINE and ALPINE-CRISTAL-JWST Program
The ALPINE-ALMA survey (US lead PI: Faisst) is a 70h large program with the ALMA radio telescope that aims at understanding the dust and gas properties of galaxies in the early Universe. The ALPINE-CRISTAL-JWST program is a 60h follow up program with JWST's NIRSpec instrument (PI: Faisst) that adds crucial optical spectroscopic coverage to 18 ALPINE galaxies in the COSMOS-Web field. With the combination of Hubble, JWST, and ALMA we built the most comprehensive multi-wavelength sample of typical early galaxies to study their structure, kinematics, and chemical enrichment.
CHAMPS ALMA Survey
The CHAMPS ALMA 1.2mm survey is a 144h ALMA program (PI: Faisst) aiming at understanding the most dust-obscured galaxies in the early Universe. CHAMPS is the largest ALMA program ever approved and consists of 4800 single pointings covering the JWST/MIRI and NIRCam observations of the COSMOS-Web Survey. The multi-wavelength data obtained from these programs (UV to far-IR) enable us to characterize the full spectral energy distribution of early galaxies to understand the contribution of dust-obscured star formation to their mass growth.
COSMOS-Web JWST Survey
COSMOS-Web is a 250h JWST cycle 1 treasury program covering parts of the COSMOS field in four JWST/NIRCam and one JWST/MIRI filter. It is the largest contiguous field that has been observed with JWST. Its data help us understand the most massive galaxies in the early Universe, the evolution of structure through cosmic time, and the distribution of dark matter. I am leading several sub-groups within the COSMOS-Web collaboration to investigate the structure of galaxies and their chemical compositions (see ALPINE).
COSMOS Collaboration
The 2-square degree COSMOS field (in the Sextans constellation) is one of the best studied fields on the sky. Since 2007, it revolutionized our understanding of early galaxy formation and evolution. It started as a large program with the Hubble Space telescope and has been recently imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Most of my work plays in the COSMOS field and I am board member of the COSMOS Scientific Steering Committee.
SLETE: A Strong Lensing Tool for Euclid
I was recently awarded a large NASA grant to develop algorithms to extract photometry and spectrosocpy of strong gravitational lenses in the Euclid data. This tool, SLETE, will enable a better characterization of the lens and source galaxies, for example the measurement of Dark Matter or the identification of the distances of the lensed background galaxies. I am currently hiring a postdoc to work on this project. Let me know if you are interested!
Euclid Consortium
Euclid is an optical space telescope launched on July 2023. It observes roughly one-third of the sky in 4 filters including spectroscopy to generate a 3-dimensional map of the Universe. Euclid will lead to breakthroughs in our understanding of the driving physics of dark matter and dark energy and in addition will revolutionize our understanding of black holes and galaxy structures. I am part of the US Euclid Consortium and responsible for the spectral decontamination pipeline of Euclid.
SPHEREx
SPHEREx is a Caltech-led 20cm optical to infrared space telescope launch on March 11, 2025. I am leading parts of the pipeline development for astrometric alignment and PSF measurement. SPHEREx aims at understanding water ice in our Milky Way, the infrared background radiation, and the cosmological expansion of our Universe. I am interested in using SPHEREx to measure Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in far-away galaxies to understand their dust production mechanisms.
PRIMA
PRIMA is a proposed 1.8m cryogenically-cooled far-infrared space telescope, which is currently in review. It is crucial to fill in the gap between the wavelength coverage of JWST and ALMA and will enable a range of studies from the origin of planets and their atmospheres, the co-evolution of galaxies and supermassive black holes, and the buildup of dust and metals in the early Universe. I am actively involved in PRIMA as part of the Caltech/IPAC team.
Other Collaborations
I am also part of several other collaborations including:
- The Japanese Medium-Band Consortium:
- VENUS:
- PHOENIX:
- COSMOS-3D:
- Beasts in the Bubbles:
- BUFFALO: The Beyond Ultra-deep Frontier Fields And Legacy Observations (BUFFALO) is a 101 orbit cycle 25 HST program (PI: C. Steinhardt) to image six Hubble Frontier Fields clusters and their parallel fields to learn about early galactic assembly and clustering and prepare targets for observations with the James Webb Space Telescope (Steinhardt et al. 2020).