All Events 

Mock NYC

Meeting

Computational Astrophysics

When

  • – ET

  • All Day

  • – ET

Where

Ingrid Daubechies Auditorium (IDA)

160 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Colorful cosmic sky over NYC skyline silhouette, Statue of Liberty centered, spaceship streaking upward. Text: MockNYC 2026 – Uncovering the Galaxy–Halo Connection..

The Mock conferences are curated workshops focused on the galaxy-halo connection, plus a new topic in each conference. The goal of Mock NYC is to bring together leading researchers in the galaxy-halo connection as well as key representatives from current and upcoming galaxy surveys to promote constructive and respectful discussions and collaborations.

Visit the Mock NYC 2026 Conference website for more information.

<br>SOC

  • Lucia A. Perez (CCA, NYC)
  • Sergio A. Contreras Hantke (Universidad de Sevilla, Spain)
  • Adrian Bayer (CCA, NYC)
  • Jonás Chaves Montero (Institut de Física d’Altes Energies, Spain)
  • Nelson Padilla (Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina)
  • Rachel Somerville (CCA, NYC)
Agenda

Tuesday, January 13, 2026

8:30 AM Breakfast
Session A – Chair: Lucia Perez
9:30 AM Lucia Perez Welcome to MockNYC!
9:50 AM Peter Behroozi Enabling Bayesian Neural Networks for Everyone with the Ray Tracing Sampler
10:10 AM Amanda Lue Emulators for Efficient Forward Modelling: Advancing Cosmological and Astrophysical Parameter Inference from Cosmological Hydrodynamical Simulations
10:30 AM Francisco Villaescusa-Navarro New methods to tackle the Halo-galaxy connection
10:50 AM Coffee Break
Session B – Chair: Facundo Rodriguez
11:20 AM Lucia Perez The Impact of Galaxy Formation on Galaxy Biasing, and Implications for Primordial non-Gaussianity Constraints
11:40 AM Miguel Icaza Calibrating Galaxy–Halo Connection Models for PNG Constraints with GP Emulators
12:00 PM Sownak Bose What shapes the galaxy correlation function?
12:20 PM Andrew Robertson Accelerated calibration of semi-analytic galaxy formation models
12:40 PM Kate Storey Fisher and Matt Ho GROUP DISCUSSION
1:10 PM Lunch
Session C – Chair: Dante Paz
2:20 PM Sergio Contreras The effect of baryons on the positions and velocities of satellite galaxies in the MTNG simulation
2:40 PM M. Celeste Artale Halo Occupation Variations in LAEs, SMGs, and Star-Forming Galaxies
3:00 PM Zheng Zheng Modeling Galaxy Clustering with the Conditional Color-Magnitude Distribution (CCMD)
3:20 PM Facundo Rodriguez Alignment of central galaxies across different scales
3:40 PM Coffee Break
Session D – Chair: Daniela Palma
4:10 PM Daisuke Nagai Baryon Pasting: Forward Modeling the Gas-Galaxy-Halo Connection for Cosmological Inference
4:30 PM Kate Storey-Fisher 100,000 Universes: Simulation-Based Inference for Galaxy Clustering with muchísimocks
4:50 PM Gillian Beltz-Mohrmann Results from the DESI Emulator Mock Challenge
5:10 PM Boon Kiat Oh The Role of Galaxy Formation Models and Simulation Codes in Shaping Simulated Universes
5:30 PM Amanda Lue and Daniel Angles-Alcazar GROUP DISCUSSION

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

8:30 AM Breakfast
Session A – Chair: Sergio Contreras
9:30 AM Nelson Padilla Galactic conformity: a simple two-halo model and its link to assembly bias
9: 50 AM Daniela Palma Tracing Large-scale conformity: Does the cosmic environment shape the signal?
10:10 AM Ian Williams The Galaxy-Halo Connection from DESI BGS Galaxy Groups
10:30 AM Ben Horowitz Robust Differentiable Models for Galaxies and Stellar Mass
10:50 AM Coffee Break
Session B – Chair: Johannes Lange
11:20 AM Andrew Hearin Multi-Survey Synthetic Cosmological Data with Diffsky
11:40 AM Kaustav Mitra Differentiable empirical modeling of the galaxy-halo-gas connection for mock-making and analyses
12:00 PM Luisa Lucie-Smith Cosmological feedback from a halo assembly perspective
12:20 PM Andres Salcedo Dark Energy Survey cluster cosmology constraints with simulation-based forward modeling
12:40 PM Zheng Zheng and Elizabeth Gonzalez GROUP DISCUSSION
11:10 PM Lunch
Session C – Chair: Gillian Beltz-Mohrmann
2:20 PM Johannes Lange Cosmological Constraints from Highly Non-Linear Clustering and Galaxy–Galaxy Lensing with DESI
2:40 PM Simona Sotiri Testing Cosmological Parameter Inference on Small, Non-Linear Scales with the FLAMINGO Simulations
3:00 PM Henry Gray Linking Galaxy Properties to Dark Matter Halo Assembly Bias in the FLAMINGO Simulation
3:20 PM Conference Photo
3:40 PM Coffee Break
Session D – Chair: Luisa Lucie-Smith
4:10 PM Jared Siegel Toward a consensus picture of baryon feedback: joint constraints from X-ray gas fractions, kSZ effect profiles, and galaxy-galaxy lensing
4:30 PM Leah Bigwood Understanding the small-scale universe: bridging galaxy formation and cosmology
4:50 PM Alex Amon Breaking Astrophysical Barriers for Next-Generation Cosmic Shear
5:10 PM Chad Popik Constraining Galaxy Models using SZ Cross-Correlation Measurements
5:30 PM Chun-Hao To and Francisco Maion GROUP DISCUSSION
6:00 PM Reception

Thursday, January 15, 2026

8:30 AM Breakfast
Session A – Chair: Andrew Hearin
9:30 AM Shy Genel What we need versus what we can do: cosmological hydrodynamical simulations for cosmological inference
9:50 AM Daniel Angles-Alcazar Cosmology and Astrophysics with MachinE Learning Simulations (CAMELS) to model the impact of baryonic physics on cosmological structure formation
10:10 AM Francisco Maion Exploring the Strengths and Limitations of IllustrisTNG with Multi-Zoom Hydrodynamical Simulations
10:30 AM Michaela Hirschmann Modelling broad-line and narrow-line emission of AGN in simulated galaxies
10:50 AM Coffee Break
Session B – Chair: M. Celeste Artale
11:20 AM Elizabeth Gonzalez Building a realistic Universe for the next generation of galaxy surveys
11:40 AM Matt Ho Learning the Universe: Building a Scalable, Verifiable Emulation Pipeline for Astronomical Survey Science
12:00 PM Shivam Pandey Painting galaxies onto dark matter only simulations using a transformer-based model
12:20 PM Nesar Ramachandra From Exascale Simulations to Multi-Modal Foundation models: Synthetic Galaxies for Cosmological Inference
12:40 PM Adrian Bayer and Boon Kiat Oh GROUP DISCUSSION
1:10 PM Lunch
Session C – Chair: Ian Williams
2:20 PM Dante Paz Voids as Cosmological and Astrophysical Laboratories
2:40 PM Antonio Montero-Dorta The galaxy bias profile of cosmic voids
3:00 PM Enrique Paillas Simulation-based emulators for DESI galaxy clustering
3:20 PM Chun-Hao To Simulations and lensing survey science
3:40 PM Coffee Break
Session D – Chair: Nelson Padilla
4:10 PM Mingshau Liu Continuous representations of baryonic feedback
4:30 PM Adrian Bayer Full-Sky Mocks for Multi-Probe Science
4:50 PM Lucia Perez and Sergio Contreras GROUP DISCUSSION
5:10 PM Lucia Perez and Sergio Contreras Wrap up for MockNYC!
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QR Code for the shared notes Google Doc

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