Collaboration Organization

On this page you will find information about the organization of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC).

Member Lists

Management Team

The DESC Management Team, which comprises the Spokesperson, Deputy Spokesperson, the Coordinators, and Operations Manager, is responsible for managing the collaboration’s scientific activities to maximize the scientific return on the funding agencies’ investment in LSST, focusing on dark energy (the DESC’s core mission) and, more broadly, the fundamental physics of the Universe with LSST data. The Management Team is defined in the LSST DESC Governance Plan.

Inquiries of the DESC Spokesperson team (Spokesperson and Deputy Spokesperson) can be sent to: lsst-desc-spokesperson [at] slac.stanford.edu.

Spokesperson team emerita: Phil Marshall (SLAC), Eric Gawiser (Rutgers, deputy), Rachel Bean (Cornell), Jeff Newman (Pitt, deputy), Bhuvnesh Jain (U. Pennsylvania), Steve Kahn (SLAC), Gregory Dubois-Felsmann (IPAC, deputy) 

Advisory Board

As defined in the Governance Plan, the members of the Advisory Board provide advice to and work with the management team to help define policy issues as they arise.

Working Groups

Working groups are the main organizational structure within DESC. The following diagram illustrates the overall working group structure, while the co-conveners for the working groups are listed below.

Diagram of overall DESC working group structure

Technical Working Groups

Coordinator: Pierre Antilogus (LPNHE/IN2P3)

Computing and Simulations Working Groups

Coordinator: Katrin Heitmann (ANL)

Data and Validation Working Groups

Coordinator: Michael Wood-Vasey (Pitt)

Analysis Working Groups

Coordinator: Anze Slosar (BNL)

Operations Committee

As per the Operations Management Plan, the LSST DESC Operations Committee is responsible for determining and prioritizing LSST DESC’s immediate and future operations needs, recommending ways to implement the prioritized operations needs, and assessing the progress and performance of funded operations activities. It is convened by, and reports to, the DESC Spokesperson.

Topical Teams

Topical teams are informally-defined groups that capture focused activity beyond the scope of a single project. Teams that have been broadly advertised within DESC are listed here:

International Resources Committee

The purpose of DESC’s International Resources Committee (IRC) is to coordinate and formalize operations contributions from across DESC’s international partners.

Liaisons

A set of active DESC members and external project leaders have agreed to serve as liaisons for DESC with key resources and precursor and concurrent surveys.

LSST Project and Facility

High-performance computing resources

Other projects

Collaboration Council (CC)

As defined in the Governance Plan, the Collaboration Council represents the Full Members of the Collaboration, facilitates discussion of collaboration-wide issues, and has overall responsibility for LSST DESC policies and procedures.

Council members are elected for 2-year terms, with ten new members elected each year. Their current year is given in parentheses after their institution. The CC elects its own chair, each year.

Ombudspersons

As defined in the LSST DESC Professional Conduct Policies, the role of the Ombudspersons is to provide informal, confidential, nonjudgmental, impartial, and independent advice and arrange mediation for DESC members for the purposes of dispute resolution.

Membership Committee

As outlined in the Governance Plan, the Membership Committee implements the review of applications for new Members and Full Members, and for new Builders, as described in the Membership Policy and Builder Status Policy, respectively.

Publication Board

As outlined in the Governance Plan, the Publication Board oversees the logistics of the publication process for all DESC publications as outlined in the Publication Policy.

Junior DESC Organization (JuDO)

JuDO works to represent and advance the interests of people in the DESC who have non-tenured, non-tenure-track, or equivalent non-permanent positions.

Meetings Committee

The Meetings Committee is convened by the Spokesperson to organize collaboration meetings and hack/sprint weeks.

Operations Staff

The DESC Pipeline Scientists (PS) and Computing Infrastructure personnel (CI) are committed to development of the collaboration’s mission-critical software and datasets.

Builders

The following members have been granted DESC Builder Status, in accordance with the LSST DESC Builder Status Policy, which states that DESC Builder Status is a recognition given by the LSST DESC to those members who have made significant contributions to building the collaboration, both its community and its simulation and analysis pipeline and infrastructure software.