Cosmology X Data Science

The Cosmology X Data Science group develops novel algorithms and ways of thinking to apply to datasets to answer fundamental questions about the cosmos.

Astronomy is entering a new era. With ground- and space-based telescopes equipped with increasingly more sensitive cameras and instruments, enabling surveys, such as Kepler, Gaia and DES, SDSS, DESI, LSST, Euclid and WFIRST, that are discovering thousands of planets and millions of stars and galaxies, we are able to seek answers to fundamental questions about the origin and evolution of the universe. Cosmology X Data Science is a group that looks into all these datasets, develop new methods and ideas to answer fundamental questions of our cosmos.

Research Highlights

February 15, 2019

From Dark Matter to Galaxies with Convolutional Networks

X. Zhang, Y. Wang, W. Zhang, Y. Sun, S. He, G. Contardo, F. Villaescusa-Navarro, S. Ho

Cosmological surveys aim at answering fundamental questions about our Universe, including the nature of dark matter or the reason of…

ArXiv:1902.05965

November 15, 2018

Learning to Predict the Cosmological Structure Formation

S. He, Y. Li, Y. Feng, S. Ho, S. Ravanbakhsh, W. Chen, B. Poczos

Matter evolved under influence of gravity from minuscule density fluctuations. Non-perturbative structure formed hierarchically over all scales, and developed non-Gaussian…

ArXiv:1811.06533

August 22, 2018

The Simons Observatory: Science goals and forecasts

Simons Observatory Collaboration

The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to…

ArXiv:1808.07445

News & Announcements

Gravitational Waves Will Settle Cosmic Conundrum

Stratospheric Ozone at Lower Latitudes Is Not Recovering, Despite Antarctic Ozone Hole Healing

David Spergel Receives 2017 NASA Exceptional Public Service Award (Princeton University News)

Upcoming Events

March 2019

21 Thu
- Meeting 2:30 - 4:00 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting
22 Fri
- Meeting 12:00 - 2:45 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting
28 Thu
- Meeting 2:30 - 4:00 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting
29 Fri
- Meeting 12:00 - 2:45 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting

April 2019

04 Thu
- Meeting 2:30 - 4:00 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting
05 Fri
- Meeting 12:00 - 2:45 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting
11 Thu
- Meeting 2:30 - 4:00 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting
12 Fri
- Meeting 12:00 - 2:45 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting
18 Thu
- Meeting 2:30 - 4:00 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting
19 Fri
- Meeting 12:00 - 2:45 PM
  Cosmology X Data Science Group Meeting

Group Members

David Spergel, Ph.D.

Director, CCA

David Spergel joined the foundation in 2016 to lead its Center for Computational Astrophysics. He is an astrophysicist with research interests ranging from the search for planets around nearby stars to the shape of the universe.

Shirley Ho, Ph.D.

Group Leader, Cosmology X Data Science

Shirley Ho joined CCA in Summer 2018 as leader of the Cosmology X Data Science group (CDS). Her research interests have ranged from fundamental cosmological measurements to exoplanet statistics to utilizing machine learning to estimate how much dark matter is in the universe.

Gabriella Contardo, Ph.D.

Flatiron Research Fellow, Cosmology X Data Science

Gabriella Contardo joined the foundation in July 2018 as a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics. She completed her PhD in machine learning at LIP6, Université Pierre et Marie Curie in Paris, where she worked on cost-sensitive prediction and meta-active learning problems…

Stephen Feeney, Ph.D.

Flatiron Research Fellow, Cosmology X Data Science

Stephen Feeney joined the foundation in 2016 as a research fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics, having previously worked at Imperial College and University College London. His research interests include observational cosmology, the cosmic microwave background, early-universe physics, machine learning and physical applications of…

Elena Giusarma, Ph.D.

Flatiron Research Fellow, Cosmology X Data Science

Elena Giusarma joined the foundation in 2018 as a Flatiron Research Fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics.

Elena Massara, Ph.D.

Flatiron Research Fellow, Cosmology X Data Science

Elena Massara joined the Center for Computional Astrophysics as a Flatiron Research Fellow. Elena completed her PhD at SISSA and received her Masters in physics from University of Padua / University of Geneva.

Sigurd Naess, Ph.D.

Associate Research Scientist, Cosmology X Data Science

Sigurd Naess joined the foundation in 2016 as an associate research scientist in the statistical astronomy group of the Center for Computational Astrophysics. His research focuses on analyzing cosmic microwave background data from experiments such as QUIET, ACT, PIXIE and the Simons Observatory.

Francisco Villaescusa-Navarro, Ph.D.

Flatiron Research Fellow, Cosmology X Data Science

Francisco Villaescusa-Navarro joined the foundation in 2016 as a research fellow at the Center for Computational Astrophysics. His research interests range from cosmology to galaxy formation and its work is focused on understanding the impact of massive neutrinos on the cosmological observables and on the…