Seminar

"Do Nearby Habitable-World Candidates Have an Atmosphere?"

Professor René Doyon’s research activities are focussed on the development of state-of-the-art astronomical instrumentation for various ground- and space-based observatories. He is also actively involved in various observational programs for detecting and characterizing brown dwarfs, exoplanets and young low-mass stars. Professor Doyon is the Director of the Trottier Institute for Research on Exoplanets and the Observatoire du Mont-Mégantic.

"Halo Clustering, Galaxy Clustering, and the Theory and Detection of Assembly Bias"

Andrew Zentner is Professor and Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, where he has been a member of the faculty since 2007. Originally, from Queens, in New York City, Andrew earned a B. S. in Electrical Engineering from The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, a unique, tuition-free school in New York’s East Village, in 1998. He earned his Ph. D. in Physics from The Ohio State University in 2003. Subsequently, Andrew conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Chicago where he was a Kavli Fellow and a National Science Foundation Fellow before joining the faculty at Pittsburgh. 

"Modeling Galaxy Clusters for Cosmology"

Prof. Camille Avestruz is an assistant professor in the department of physics at the University of Michigan with research interests that span astrophysics, cosmology, and computation. Her primary focus is to understand the evolution of clusters of galaxies. Other aspects of her work prepare for the next decade of observations, which will produce unprecedented volumes of data. 

"From Science to Data Science: How to Land a Job in Industry."

Elena Massara is a Machine Learning Scientist at TD Bank and holds a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from SISSA (Italy, 2016). She previously held postdoctoral research positions at the University of California, Berkeley; the Flatiron Institute in New York; and the Waterloo Centre for Astrophysics in Canada.

"DESI DR2: Survey Overview, Cosmological Constraints from BAO, and Preparation for Full-Shape Analyses"

Ardaud de Mattia (CEA Saclay) is a member of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration, where he has worked successively on photometric systematics (through image simulations), clustering catalogs and two-point statistics, and cosmological parameter inference. Arnaud is deeply involved in pipeline development for DESI — from catalog creation to cosmological constraints — leveraging GPU computing and automatic differentiation whenever relevant. He is also interested in galaxy field-level inference as a more comprehensive approach to cosmological analysis.

Dr Adrian Bayer (Princeton) works on the intersection of astrophysics and machine learning. Recent interests include: creating multi-probe cosmological simulations for galaxy, lensing, and CMB surveys; performing optimal and interpretable cosmological inference by sampling high-dimensional parameter spaces to reconstruct the Universe's initial conditions and using simulation-based inference; and developing statistical techniques to find astronomical signals in large and noisy spaces, such as for super massive black hole binaries and exoplanets. 

"AGN Feedback and the Gentle Stirring of Cluster Cores: New Results from XRISM"

Dr Anwesh Majumder was awarded his Bachelors (2014-2017) and Masters in Physics (2017-2019) with astro specialisation from Presidency University, Kolkata, India. After that, he moved to University of Amsterdam for his PhD (2019-2025). Anwesh followed that up with a short Scientist C position at Space Research Organisation Netherlands (March 2025-May 2025) before moving to Waterloo to take up a joint position with the WCA and Brian McNamara. Anwesh uses the XRISM X-ray telescope to understand how supermassive black holes affect the environment of galaxy clusters.

"Probing the Dark Sector: Implications of DESI's Dynamic Dark Energy Results"

Sven’s (UCSC) scientific journey has been shaped by trying to ensure accurate and precise results from weak lensing surveys. His contributions to this field are both direct investigations of potential systematic biases (such as variable survey depth) as well as the establishment of higher-order lensing statistics (persistent homology and third-order shear statistics, in collaboration with Pierre) for a robust cosmological inference. As a member of DESI, he performed the validation of Galaxy Lensing measurements for subsequent cosmological analyses.

Woorak Choi is a postdoctoral fellow at McMaster University. He completed his PhD in 2024 at Yonsei University, South Korea. Woorak's research focuses on understanding the evolution of the ISM and star formation in extreme environments, ranging from galactic centers to galaxy clusters. As a radio astronomer, he primarily uses radio telescopes such as ALMA and VLA, but has recently begun working with JWST data. Woorak is also interested in incorporating numerical simulations to complement observational studies.

Jiaming Pan is a Ph.D. candidate in Physics at the University of Michigan. His research focuses on constraining modified gravity and dark energy to understand the physical origin of cosmic acceleration. He is an active member of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration, where he has contributed to analyses of dark energy and tests of gravity, including extended dark energy analysis with BAO measurements and modified gravity constraints from full-shape clustering. He is also developing methods to use gravitational-wave “standard sirens,” particularly through cross-correlation with galaxy surveys, as independent probes of the Hubble constant.