Public Webinars & Hybrid Events
Webinars are held monthly and are open to all interested members of the scientific community.
Unless otherwise stated, these webinars will take place on Zoom Fridays once a month at 1:30-2:30 PM ET. Some webinars will be hybrid events with an in-person component at the CMU campus.
To join, you must be subscribed to our webinar mailing list. You can also add the webinars to your calendar by subscribing to the Google Calendar below. Past webinar recordings and information are available in the online archive and on the STAMPS YouTube Channel.
Upcoming Webinars & Hybrid Events
April 25, 2025
Joel Leja - The Pennsylvania State University
Location: Steinberg Auditorium (BH A53) + Zoom
Title: Rapid inference of galaxy properties in the age of deep and large-scale surveys of the universe
Abstract: The inference of the physical properties of galaxies at cosmological distance requires modeling a wide range of physics, including e.g. stellar evolution and atmospheres; dust attenuation and re-emission; nebular physics; and AGN emission. Bayesian inference is often used to map the inevitable degeneracies, and the large amount of physics and wide parameter space means these codes are typically not fast (~1-10 hours/object). Yet current and near-future surveys of the universe will yield spectra for millions of galaxies and imaging for billions. I will discuss the tactics employed to speed up these codes, ranging from neural net emulators of key physics (photoionization modeling; stellar spectra) to efficient gradient-enhanced GPU-accelerated high-dimensional sampling to rapid simulation-based inference. These yield speed-ups of somewhere between 100x and 100,000x, with unavoidable trade-offs in flexibility and accuracy. I will discuss applications of these techniques to model modern astronomical data, including both industrial-scale modeling of galaxy observations and newly-possible directions such as spatially resolved galaxy modeling. Finally, time permitting, I will discuss some of the exciting new discoveries made with these techniques in the very distant universe seen by JWST.
Bio: Joel Leja is the Dr. Keiko Miwa Ross Early Career Endowed Faculty Chair and an Assistant Professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University. His research aims to understand how galaxies form using large ground-and space-based telescopes, large surveys, and fast computers. He specializes in modeling observations of distant galaxies and in data-intensive astrophysical methodologies. Joel was named a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher in 2023 and in 2024 (top 1% of cited researchers in astrophysics), and awarded Yale University's Brouwer Prize in 2019 for a PhD thesis of unusual merit.
May 16, 2025
Brian Nord - Fermilab
Location: Zoom
Title: TBD
Abstract: TBD
Bio: TBD