Welcome! This project recently migrated onto Zooniverse’s new architecture. For details, see here.
The Team
Karl Gebhardt - Professor Research Scientist
Dr. Gebhardt is the Herman and Joan Suit Professor of Astrophysics and serves as the Astronomy Chair at the University of Texas at Austin. He is an observational astronomer whose research interests include the formation and evolution of galaxies, the dynamics of stellar systems, study of supermassive black holes, and cosmological studies of dark energy. He started HETDEX and is currently the Project Scientist. Karl is the creator of the HETDEX data reduction pipeline.
Keely Finkelstein - Professor Research Scientist
Dr. Finkelstein is an Associate Professor of Instruction and Associate Chair at UT Austin in the Department of Astronomy. She focuses on galaxy evolution and star formation studies, as well as teaching and education efforts. Dr. Finkelstein also supports undergraduate education and curriculum design work through her role as the Faculty Assistant Director of the Office of STEM Education Excellence in the College of Natural Sciences.
Erin Cooper - Research Scientist
Erin Mentuch Cooper is a research scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. She is an observational astronomer who utilizes large galaxy surveys to study galaxy evolution, star formation and stellar populations. She has extensive experience with multi-wavelength observations, spectral energy distribution fitting, and is especially interested in the reprocessing of stellar emission by ionized gas, molecular gas and dust. As Data Manager, Erin organizes HETDEX data release products and keeps tabs on what data goes into Zooniverse and helped to design and develop the Dark Energy Explorers program.
Dustin Davis – Postdoc
Dr. Davis received his Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin in 2023, having returned to academia after spending 20 years in software engineering and management(telecommunications, biometrics, and medical software). Dustin’s original background is in computer science, receiving his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas at Dallas. Dustin joined HETDEX in 2014, first working on the telescope control system and later in science and data analysis. For the past few years, he has been largely involved with the organization of HETDEX data, the classification of spectra, and the exploration of galaxy properties with a focus on the leakage of ionizing radiation.
Lindsay House - Lead Graduate Student
Lindsay is a fourth-year graduate student and NSF graduate research fellow. She created Dark Energy Explorers as part of her graduate work. Her research focus is on combining the techniques of participant science projects and machine learning to classify the millions of galaxies that HETDEX will collect. Lindsay is also passionate about bringing high level astrophysics to the general public through participant science, education and the museum spaces.
Laurel Weiss - Graduate Student
Laurel is a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin. She attended Penn State University as an undergrad where she worked with early HETDEX data of distant galaxies. Currently, she uses spectral stacking techniques to generate “average” spectra from the now millions of detections within HETDEX. This process enhances real signal buried underneath noise in the data. These stacked spectra allow for the investigation of very faint spectral features which may give us key insights into the environments of galaxies and the diffuse universe. Laurel relies on accurate classifications of real galaxy spectra to reduce the noise hiding these important features.
Jose Saucedo - Researcher Assistant
Jose is a recent graduate of the University of Texas at Austin. He majored in Astronomy and earned a teaching license. He is currently a high school biology and chemistry teacher, instructing on a project-based curriculum. Within Dark Energy Explorers, he focuses on integrating and diversifying astrophysics by creating educational curriculum on cosmological topics, where he leverages pedagogical tools to create greater access to people. Jose also takes the lead with our methods for global outreach and Participant Science engagement efforts, helping to organize and edit our Zoom nights, Zooniverse website, and YouTube channel.
Mike Truong - Researcher Assistant
Mike is a graduating senior at the University of Texas at Austin. He is majoring in Astronomy, Physics, and minoring in Computer Science. With Dark Energy Explorers, he aggregates and analyzes user data for future user experience and education outreach refinement. Mike is responsible for integrating Dark Energy Explorers' user-classified data and expanding the internal machine learning pipeline, bringing a graphical approach to improve the models' accuracy. Mike has a passion for digital signal processing, motivated by his experience with cameras and post-processing software through his job as a photojournalist and his hobby as a street photographer.
