The Team
Alon Byrne — Student, University of Arizona
Alon Byrne is an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona majoring in Astronomy, and his research interests include large-scale structure mapping and remote sensing in Mars' polar regions. He also currently works on producing digital terrain models from stereo satellite imagery of Mars and the Moon.
Abigail Tennyson — Student, University of Arizona
Abigail Tennyson is an undergraduate student at the University of Arizona majoring in Astronomy. Her research interests include observational astronomy and exoplanets. She also currently does outreach for astrobiology and exoplanet detections.
Debasish Hazarika - Post-doc, University of Arizona
Debasish Hazarika is an astronomer at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona, with experience of using variable star, analyzing time-series and large scale optical/IR photometric surveys to study the structure, extinction and stellar population of the Milky way and Magellanic Clouds.
Deepthi S. Prabhu — Post-doc, University of Arizona
Deepthi is an astronomer at Steward Observatory, University of Arizona. Her research focuses on nearby dwarf galaxies, using observations of resolved stellar populations to investigate their structure, stellar content, and evolutionary history.
David Sand — Faculty, University of Arizona
David Sand is a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He is an observational astronomer with interests which include nearby galaxies, dark matter, supernovae, gravitational wave events and instrumentation. He likes to hang out with his daughter. When he gets a chance he hikes, reads a book, goes for a run and/or naps.
Michael Jones — Staff scientist, Caltech/IPAC
Dr. Michael Jones is an astronomer specializing in the formation and evolution of galaxies. He makes use of both ground and space-based telescopes from the radio, to the optical/IR, to the ultra-violet to study the gas and stars in nearby galaxies.
Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil — Faculty, Dartmouth College
Professor Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil is an observational astrophysicist who works with large imaging surveys and tailored follow-up observations from large telescopes. Her main science focus is to understand the nature of dark matter and galaxy formation via observations of nearby galaxies.
Clare Higgs - Rubin Education and Public Outreach Astronomer
Clare Higgs is an astronomer on Rubin's Education and Public Outreach team, which supports citsci projects and their teams. In addition, her research focus is dwarf galaxies in the Local Group.
Richard Donnerstein - Researcher, University of Arizona
Richard Donnerstein is a retired physician doing volunteer astronomy research at the University of Arizona. He has helped develop software that has been used to identify both blue blobs and diffuse galaxies.
Dennis Zaritsky — Faculty, University of Arizona
Dennis Zaritsky is a Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona. He is an observational astronomer with interests that include all aspects of galactic halos (dark matter, stars, gas, dust) and galaxies at the extremes (low surface brightness and the central galaxies in galaxy clusters, which are the largest galaxies known).
Paul Bennet — Post-doc, Space Telescope Science Institute
Dr. Paul Bennet is an astronomer working at the Space Telescope Science Institute. His research interests include the study of dwarf galaxies via observations of nearby galaxies and the motions of galaxies within the Local Group.
Denija Crnojevic — Faculty, University of Tampa
Denija Crnojevic is a Physics & Astronomy Professor at the University of Tampa. Her research interests include resolved stellar populations and nearby dwarf galaxies.
Kristine Spekkens — Faculty, Queen's University
Dr. Kristine Spekkens is a professor at Queen's University. She leads a research group focused on understanding the structure and evolution of nearby galaxies, and she is particularly interested in using their atomic gas reservoirs to probe cosmological galaxy formation.
Laura Hunter - Post-Doc, Dartmouth College
Dr. Laura Hunter studies low-mass galaxies in the Local Volume with a focus on their satellite galaxy populations and their evolution. She is an observational astronomer who works both in the optical and radio to understand galaxies' recent star formation and gas kinematics.
Guinevere Herron - Graduate Student, Dartmouth College
Guinevere is a graduate student at Dartmouth College working with Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil on studying dwarf galaxies and other faint galaxies in astronomical surveys. She is interested in using low-mass galaxies as laboratories for galaxy evolution and cosmology. In her free time, Guinevere enjoys reading science-fiction, performing in drag shows, and hanging out with her cats Marceline and Grunckle.
Nicolas Mazziotti & Swapnaneel Dey
Nicolas & Swapnaneel built the original Blobs and Blurs project, on which this Rubin version is based, when they were undergraduates at the University of Arizona.
Sasha Campana - Graduate Student, Dartmouth College
Sasha Campana is a graduate student at Dartmouth College working with Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil. Her current research focuses on using resolved stars to characterize the morphology of Milky Way ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. She is interested in studying resolved/semi-resolved dwarf galaxies to understand the nature of dark matter and galaxy formation/evolution.
