Faculty and Postdocs

Ian Dell'Antonio

Principle Investigator

About

Ian Dell’Antonio has been a professor at Brown since 2000. Before that, he was a postdoc at the National Optical Astronomy Observatories (1998-2000) and postdoctoral researcher at Bell Laboratories (1995-1998). His research covers the study of galaxy clusters as probes of dark energy, dark matter, and as laboratories for galaxy evolution.

Shenming Fu

Postdoc at NOIRLab

shenming.fu@noirlab.edu

About

Shenming Fu has been studying the effects of image blending on galaxy cluster lensing shear measurements with image simulations, and he is leading the processing of the DECam exposures for the LoVoCCS clusters with LSST Science Pipelines. He has the experience of using the WIYN telescope at KPNO and the Blanco telescope at CTIO to capture the images of galaxy clusters. He is also working on developing a cluster mass measurement pipeline with the researchers in DESC. His research interests include gravitational lensing in galaxy clusters, photometric redshifts, and galaxy cluster cosmology. He was the organizer of the BASS/CFPU seminars in 2018-2020, worked as a TA for astronomy labs in 2017 and 2018, and participated in Brown University’s Sidewalk Astronomy as public outreach in 2018 and 2019.

Graduate Researchers

Zacharias Escalante

PhD Candidate

zacharias_escalante@brown.edu

About

Zach is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate. He obtained his master’s from Brown University in 2022, and graduated from UT Austin in 2020 with his bachelor’s in physics and astronomy. Much of his efforts have been spent generating cluster mass estimates, mass maps, and photometric redshifts from LoVoCCS data. He is now working on modifying the processing pipeline to measure the intra-cluster light of the LoVoCCS fields, and hopes to apply these techniques to future LSST data. In his free time, he is an avid rock climber!

LinkedIn

Jess Nelson

PhD Candidate

jessica_n_nelson@brown.edu

About

Jess is currently a 4th year PhD candidate at Brown University, where she received her Master’s in Physics in 2023. Prior to Brown, she earned her Bachelor’s in Physics and Mathematics from Westminster College (New Wilmington, PA) in 2021. While much of her earlier time in the astro-lensing group was spent processing LoVoCCS data to generate mass maps, her focus now primarily lies in studying star formation in galaxy clusters as a function of spatial distribution and environment, with the ultimate goal of differentiating galaxy-galaxy interactions and ram-pressure stripping effects in star formation quenching.

Søren Josef Helhoski

PhD Candidate

soren_helhoski@brown.edu

About

Søren is a currently a fourth year PhD candidate at Brown; previously having graduated from University of Rochester in 2021 with a BS in Physics and Astronomy. Using LoVoCCs data, Søren has investigated biases within the group’s mass fitting of galaxy clusters, and currently is working on injecting fabricated galaxies into DECam images for mass fit calibration.

Anthony Englert

PhD Student

anthony_englert@brown.edu

Rahul Shinde

Research Assistant

rahul_shinde@brown.edu

About

Rahul is a Research Assistant at the Astrolensing Group. He graduated with a Master’s in Physics from Brown University in 2023. During his Master’s thesis, he focused on studying the abnormal weak lensing signal of Abell 1285. He has since worked on studying merging clusters within the LoVoCCS survey and improving jedisim—a lensing simulator developed by the group. Currently, he’s part of a team working on recalibrating and validating LoVoCCS results using jedisim and the source injection package developed by LSST.

GitHub Resume

Alyssa Hardin

Masters

alyssa_hardin@brown.edu

Gillian Foo

Masters

gillian_foo@brown.edu

Spencer D Francis

Masters

spencer_francis@brown.edu

About

Spencer received his B.S. in Physics and Mathematical Sciences at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. His work with accessibly microscopy and rapid fluid-dynamic prototyping earned him the Salisbury Prize in 2023. He is also a proud native of East Providence.

Undergraduate Researchers

Pei-Jun

2026

pei-jun_huang@brown.edu

Aster Winkler

2026

aster_winkler@brown.edu

About

Aster is an undergraduate student studying astrophysics at Brown. They currently work on detecting the weak gravitational lensing signals of galaxy filaments, and are interested in how lensing may be used to detect and better understand large-scale extended structures.

Ruoning Lan

2026

ruoning_lan@brown.edu

John Lockwood

2027

john_lockwood@brown.edu

About

John is an undergraduate from Milford, Pennsylvania studying applied math and computer science.

Ryan Seeb

2027

ryan_seeb@brown.edu

About

Ryan is an undergraduate student from Atlanta, Georgia concentrating in Astrophysics. He is passionate about physics, photography, and guitar.

Group Alumni

Gillian Wilson

Postdoc 2000–2002

Jeff Kubo

PhD 2006

Hossein Khiabanian

PhD 2007

Wessyl Kelly

PhD 2010

Richard Fishcooker

PhD 2012

Paul Huwe

PhD 2013

Van Dao

MS 2013

Ryan Michney

PhD 2015

Jacqueline McCleary

PhD 2017

Tianqi Tang

MS 2019

Mengxin Du

MS 2019

Patchara Wongsutthikoson

MS 2019

Binyang Liu

PhD 2020

Forest Mathieu

MS 2020

Jessica Washington

MS 2024

Past Undergraduates:

2002

Miguel Daal

Jennifer Gaskins

Albert Siryaporn

2005

Rohit Hegde

Christopher Mendillo

Dylan Spaulding

2007

Stefan Janiszewski

2009

Alexander Cerjan

Amandeep Gill

Nik Logan

Amy Lowitz

Teodor Moldovan

Ruslan Skomorohov

2010

Ariella Kirsch

2011

Daniel Munger

Erik Stayton

2012

Kate Alexander

Clarence Huynh

2013

Emmet Golden-Marx

Jesse Golden-Marx

Geoffrey Sedor

Cameron Hill

Austin Pfundheller

2014

Andrew Armstrong

Emily Gilbert

2016

Christopher Bonadonna

Samantha Dallas

Soumya Ghosh

Alexander Moskowitz

Sean Pike

Kate Storey-Fisher

Scott Underriner

2017

Sarah Blunt

Evan Harris

Laurent Remillard

Carl Romines

Alvaro Zamora

2018

Jack Butler

Joseph Fichera

Cory Greer

Emily Yaruss

2021

Natalie Rugg

Derek Waleffe

2022

Isabel Horst

Liam Storan

Edgar Villegas

2023

Taylor Knapp

2024

Timothy Launders
Nathan Craig

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