Reese Baird
Phone: 510 486-7308       Fax: 510 486-5812

Reese Baird joins C³ after a two-year tour of duty with the Peace Corps in Cameroon.  Previously he was a member of the High Performance Computing Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory.  He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin.

Seb Bongard
Phone: 510 486-5790       Fax: 510 486-5812

Seb 'Ze Frog' Bongard works in the SuperNova factory, a cosmological survey of Nearby type Ia supernova. His research interests are cosmology, radiative transfer and understanding type Ia supernova. He is also responsible of the decontamination of the SNfactory data from its host galaxy light. All his research topics involve intensive computing as well as techniques some might consider to be from the Dark side of the Force (like blind or myopic deconvolution for the SNfactory data decontamination). He earned a dual Ph.D. from the University of Oklahoma City (USA) and l'Universite Claude Bernard de Lyon (France), and is now a postdoc at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Julian Borrill
Phone: 510 486-7308      Fax: (510) 486-5812      http://crd.lbl.gov/~borrill/

Julian Borrill is a computational cosmologist, specifically interested in the application of high performance computing (HPC) to the analysis of the most profound — and intractable — data sets in cosmology. His current work is focused on the coming generation of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization measurements, including those of the Planck satellite, the EBEx balloon flights, and the PolarBear ground-based mission. While seeking general computational science solutions to the challenges of these data sets, much of this work is performed on the NERSC HPC systems. Other research areas range from simulations of the multi-dimensional energy knots expected in the first moments after the Big Bang to holistic performance evaluation of HPC systems using an application-derived benchmarking tool. He has previously worked at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire and Imperial College, London. He holds an M.A. in mathematics and political science from the University of Cambridge, an M.Sc. in Astrophysics from the University of London, an M.Sc. in Computer Science also from the University of London, and a D.Phil. in Physics from the University of Sussex.

Chris Cantalupo
Phone: 510 495-2967      Fax: 510 486-5812

Chris Cantalupo works on astrophysical data reduction problems; in particular, he works on the analysis of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data sets. This research is being fully funded by NASA's Planck Surveyor U.S. Data Analysis project. The CMB data set that will be acquired by the Planck satellite will be massive. The analysis of this data set will require the implementation and development of efficient parallel algorithms. In addition to this code development, Chris is involved in the simulation of Planck data, and the reduction of these simulations in order to test existing codes, reveal the effect of systematic errors and hone the telescope's observing strategy.

Ted Kisner
Phone: 510 495-2697       Fax: 510 486-5812 

Ted Kisner is currently focused on improving the state of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data analysis. This includes both research into and software implementations of new algorithms, as well as the creation of infrastructure tools for managing CMB data and analysis software. Ted has a Ph.D. in Physics from UC Santa Barbara.  His past work includes analysisof data from the BOOMERanG experiment and his current efforts are directed at the Planck and EBEX experiments.

Peter Nugent
Phone: 510 486-6942       Fax: 510 486-5812      http://supernova.lbl.gov/~nugent/

Peter Nugent is currently a staff scientist at LBNL in the Computational Research Division. His main areas of interest are the discovery and observation of supernovae of all types with the goal of understanding the physics of their explosions, their progenitor systems and nucleosynthesis products through spectrum synthesis. He is a member of the the Supernova Factory and the Supernova Acceleration Probe Team and is a former member of the Supernova Cosmology Project. Dr. Nugent attended Bowdoin College, graduating magne cum laude in physics in 1990. He received his M.S. in physics from the University of Oklahoma in 1993, and his Ph.D. in physics with a concentration in astronomy in 1997. He then became a Postdoctoral Fellow in Physics under Saul Perlmutter at LBNL from 1996 until 2000.

Rollin Thomas
Phone: 510 486-4697        Fax: 510 486-6738

Rollin Thomas is a computational astrophysicist. He is particularly interested in the multidimensional model supernova atmosphere problem, one which depends on powerful algorithms and high-performance computing.  In his work with the Nearby Supernova Factory, Rollin is developing multiple computational techniques for the systematic analysis of Type Ia supernovae, with the aim to understand the physics of these stellar explosions and improve their power as cosmological distance indicators. He received his B.S. in physics from Purdue University, and his Ph.D. in physics (astrophysics concentration) at the University of Oklahoma.