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IPAC at the California Institute of Technology seeks a motivated high school student to serve as a part-time research technician for up to seven months who will participate in a program to construct of a list of possible variable stars from photometric data acquired by NASA’s Near Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) Reactivation mission. During its 10+ years of operation NEOWISE has surveyed the full sky over 20 times and has amassed a collection of brightness measurements that sample every visible object 250 or more times. The list of variable star candidates will be drawn from a substantial fraction of the entire sky and will be made available to the general astronomical community after the conclusion of the project. The candidate variable stars are expected to include eclipsing binary stars, pulsating stars, and eruptive stars of all types to seed follow-up by the research community.
Essential Job Duties
As an assistant research technician, you will work with IPAC scientists to conduct a program that will:
- Cluster individual detections on the 188 billion-row NEOWISE-R Single Exposure Source Detection Table
- Develop Machine Learning software that will train on known and simulated examples of light curves of variable stars
- Optimize the software to operate on large data sets and run the code on data that cover wide areas of the sky
- Produce lists of rank-ordered variable star candidates, and write documentation to explain the methodology
- Perform other related duties as assigned
You will also participate in the vetting of candidate variable stars identified by other students (and possibly citizen scientists) who will be participating in the project.
Basic Qualifications
- Experience programming in Python
- Demonstrated experience running/testing/optimizing Machine-Learning code
- Basic knowledge of astronomy, either through having taken an introductory astronomy class or through participation in astronomy-based workshops or summer programs
- Good verbal and written communication skills
- Work permit allowing part-time employment
Preferred Qualifications
Beyond these basic qualifications, there are a set of skills and experiences that will add to your ability to contribute to the project:
- Experience working with scientific data sets and use cases
- The ability to work for part of the week and be self-motivated
Required Documents
Your application should include:
- A one-page cover letter conveying your skills, experience, and passion
- A one-page resume highlighting your qualifications, past awards, etc.
IPAC, part of the Physics, Math, and Astronomy Division at Caltech (www.caltech.edu), partners with NASA, NSF, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL, operated for NASA by Caltech), and the world-wide research community to advance exploration of our universe. IPAC provides science operations, user support, data and archive services, and scientific vision to maximize discovery with observatories both in space and on the ground. Scientists at IPAC have access to Palomar Observatory and other research facilities.
