Curriculum Vitae Grac¸a Rocha
1 Personal
Name: Grac¸a Maria Moreira de Sousa Teixeira da Rocha. Nationality: Portuguese.
Home address: 400 S. Mentor Av, 104 Pasadena, CA 91106 USA
Work address: Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) 4800 Oak Grove Drive M/S 169-327 Pasadena, CA 91109, USA and Caltech Cahill building MS 59-33 1200 E. California Pasadena,CA 91125-3300, USA
Telephone (JPL): 1-818-393-0095 Telephone (Cahill): 1-626-395-3236 Fax: 1-626-584-9929 e-mail: grocha@jpl.nasa.gov ; [email protected]
2 Academic
2.1 Academic career
• 1987: Licenciatura in Mathematics branch of scientific specialization in Pure Mathematics, Faculty of Science, University of Porto (four year degree in Mathematics/Theoretical Mathematics). • 1991: Licenciatura in Physics and Applied Mathematics, majoring in Astronomy, Faculty of Science, University of Porto (four year degree in Physics and Applied Mathematics). • 1992: Master of Science in Astrophysics Degree, Department of Mathematics, Queen Mary and West- field College, University of London. MSc supervisor: Prof. Peter Coles. • 1997: Doctor of Philosophy, PhD., in the University of Cambridge, Physics Department, MRAO, and Downing College, UK. Research undertaken in the Radio Astronomy Group of the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cam- bridge in Cosmology. PhD supervisor: Prof. A.N. Lasenby. Thesis title: ‘Comparison of Microwave Background Predictions and Observations’. Grac¸a Rocha 2
• 1997: Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Physics, Kansas State University, KSA, USA. • 1998-2001: Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto (CAUP), Portu- gal. • 1998: Invited Lecturer for fourth-year course on ’Extragalactic Astronomy’ (option in Astronomy) for the Physics and Applied Mathematics degree, University of Porto • 2000-2001: Visitor at the University of Oxford. • Since 2001: Collaborator at the Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto (CAUP), Portugal. • Since 2000: Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford, Astrophysics group. • 2001-2005: Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cavendish Astrophysics Group, University of Cam- bridge, UK. Work developed in collaboration with Prof. Anthony Lasenby and Prof. George Efstathiou. • 2005: Postdoctoral Scholar in Physics at the Observational Cosmology Group, in the California Institute of Technology, Caltech. Work developed in collaboration with Prof. Andrew Lange, Dr. Charles Lawrence, Dr. Krzysztof Gorski and Prof. Marc Kamionkowski. • 2006-2009: Staff Scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, IPAC, in the California Institute of Technology, Caltech. • Since 2009: Staff Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, Relativistic Astrophysics group, and Visitor at Caltech, Physics Department, Observational Cosmology group. Work developed in collaboration with Dr. Charles Lawrence, Dr. Krzysztof Gorski and Prof. Marc Kamionkowski. • 2011-2012: Group Supervisor of the ’Evolution of Galaxies’ group at JPL, Caltech.
2.2 Research experience
• 1990-1991: Research in Optics and its applications supervised by Prof. Jose´ R. Salcedo at Faculty of Science, University of Porto. • 1992: Research for a Master of Science in Astrophysics Degree, Department of Mathematics, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London. MSc supervisor: Prof. Peter Coles. • 1997: Research for a Doctor of Philosophy, PhD., Degree in the University of Cambridge, Physics De- partment, MRAO, and Downing College, UK. Research undertaken in the Radio Astronomy Group of the Cavendish Laboratory in the University of Cam- bridge in Cosmology. PhD supervisor: Prof. A.N. Lasenby. Thesis title: ‘Comparison of Microwave Background Predictions and Observations’. • 1999-2001: Element of the ‘CMBNET: Cosmic Microwave Background Network in Europe for Theory and Data Analysis’ within the European V-framework, as member of the ‘Cambridge Planck Analysis Center’, CPAC. • 2000-2001 Research as Visitor at the University of Oxford on ‘Testing Cosmological models with the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation’, in collaboration with Prof. Joe Silk, Dr. Pedro Ferreira at Physics department of the University of Oxford; Dr. Joao˜ Magueijo at Imperial College, University of London; Prof. A.N. Lasenby, Dr. Mike Hobson at Cavendish laboratory, University of Cambridge. • 2001-2005: Research as Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Cambridge - leading the ’Quantitative Cosmology Group’ of the University of Cambridge in collaboration with Prof Anthony Lasenby and Prof. George Efstathiou. The Cambridge Leverhulme Quantitative Cosmology group is a collaboration between the Institute of Astronomy, the Cavendish Astrophysics and DAMTP Cosmology groups, all within the University of Cambridge. Grac¸a Rocha 3
• Since 2001: Member of the ‘Cambridge Planck Analysis Center’, CPAC, as an Associate of the current working group. Planck satellite is a mission of ESA’s Horizon 2000 Scientific program designed to image the anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation over the whole sky. I am also a member of several Planck Technical Working groups (WG1.7, WG4.1 and WG4.3, etc.). • Since 2002: Member of the Planck project team in the HFI as DPC (data processing), ScS (Scientific support) and Coll (Collaborator). • 2003: Participant of the European Dark Energy Network, EDEN, as Research Fellow a the University of Cambridge. • 2005: Research as Postdoctoral Fellow at California Institute of Technology, Caltech. Member of Planck and BICEP experiments, studies of CMB anisotropies and B-modes. Collaborators: Prof. Andrew Lange, Dr. Charles Lawrence, Dr. Krzysztof Gorski and Prof. Marc Kamionkowski. • Since 2005: Member of the Planck Algorithm Development Group, ADG, at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL. • Since 2005: Member of the Planck CTP Group, USPDC Group, and more recently member of the Planck HFI Core team. • Since 2005: Planck Scientist • Since 2005: LFI-liaison between IPAC and the LFI Data Processing Center, DPC. • Since 2005: Member of Planck LFI and HFI Core teams. • Deputy with Paolo Natoli as coordinator of the LFI CTA07 - core area of Power Spectrum. • Co-coordinator with Eric Hivon of the HFI CTWG9 - core working group on Power Spectrum and Likeli- hoods. • Member of several Core Areas and Core Working Groups in both the LFI and HFI Core teams: 1. Map-making core area in both LFI and HFI: HFI CTWG6 and LFI CTA04 2. Parameter estimation in both HFI an LFI : HFI CTWG9 and LFI CTA08 3. Non-CMB science : LFI CTA09 4. Polarization: LFI CTA06 5. Component Separation core area: LFI CTA05, HFI WG4 • Member of several Planck Working Groups:
1. WG3 or CTP (Cl T and P) working group 2. WG2 Component Separation working group 3. Planck Sky Model, PSM team 4. WG4 Non-Gaussianity working group 5. WG5 SZ studies working group • 2006-2009: Research as Staff Scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center, IPAC, Caltech.. Work for the production of the Planck Early Release Compact Source Catalog, ERCSC. • Organizer and coordinator of the Compact Source Investigation, CSI, collaboration amongst IPAC, Santander, Cambridge, Paris, and Santander . This collaboration was set up to help build up the compact source detection pipeline for production of the Early Release Compact Source Catalog at IPAC, an US official Planck deliverable. • since 2009: Research as Staff Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, Caltech - Planck Scientist and Core team member of Planck satellite; and Co-coordinator of areas such as: detection/extraction of Compact sources, CSI; estimation of CMB Power Spectrum and Likelihoods with a view to determination of Cosmological parameters with Planck data. Collaborators: Dr. Charles Lawrence, Dr. Krzysztof Gorski and Prof. Marc Kamionkowski. Grac¸a Rocha 4
• Team member of research projects funded by FCT, Portugal. • Co-PI and Team member of NASA and NSF research proposals. • Member of several experiments such as Planck, BICEP, CBASS, GEMP, etc.
2.3 Teaching and Supervising experience
• 1986-1991: 1985/87 - Supervision of classes in the ’Theory of Manifolds’ final year option course for the Mathematics degree in the University of Porto; 1986/91 - Teacher of Mathematics in High School at Porto. • 1994: College supervisor for the course ‘Part IA Elementary Mathematics for Biologists’, New Hall, University of Cambridge. • 1999: Lecturer of post-graduate course on ‘Comparison of Microwave Background Predictions and Observations’, held at CAUP, June-July, 1999. • 2002: College supervisor for the course ‘Mathematical Tripos Part IB, Electromagnetism (O5)’, Queens, Pembroke, Magdalene and Jesus College, University of Cambridge. • 2003: College supervisor for the course ‘Mathematical Tripos Part IB, Introduction to Special Relativity (P6a)’, Downing and Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. • 2002-2005: External Interviewer for Undergraduate Mathematics Admissions for Magdalene College. • 2000-2003: PhD co/support-supervisor
– 2000-2001: Support-supervisor with J. Silk of PhD student, Rebecca Bowen on ’Studies of theTopol- ogy of the Universe: simulations and data analysis’. – 2000-2002: Support-supervisor with P. Scott of PhD student, Richard Savage on ’Studies of Non- Gaussianity on VSA data’. – 2002-2003: Co-supervisor with A. Challinor of PhD student, Gayoung Chon on ’Theoretical Studies of the Cosmic Microwave Background’.
• 2002-2005: PhD supervisor of
– Sarah Smith with thesis title: ‘Non-Gaussianity on the Cosmic Microwave Background’. – Nutan Rajguru with thesis title: ‘Observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background with the Very Small Array’.
• 2004-2005: Lecturer of a graduate course on ‘Theoretical Cosmology: CMB and structure formation’, at the Cavendish Astrophysics Group, University of Cambridge. (This course and other personal notes are under consideration for a future CUP publication as a book entitled ‘Cosmology: CMB and structure formation’) • Since 2005: work actively with students and postdocs from both Caltech, campus and JPL on Planck as well as on other experiments such as BICEP, CBASS, QUIET (a large percentage of my time has been ded- icated to Planck), such as Kevin Huffenberger, Loris Colombo, Sanjit Mitra, Rajib Saha, Davide Pietrobon, Luca Pagano, etc. • Visitors since 2006: Mark Ashdown from Cambridge; Carlo Contaldi from Imperial College; London; Roberto Trotta from University of Oxford, UK; Eric Hivon from IAP; Luca Pagano, Alessandro Melchiorri’s PhD student from Rome; Duncan Hanson, Anthony Challinor’s PhD students from Cambridge; Pedro Car- valho, Mike Hobson and A. Lasenby’s PhD student from Cambridge, Marcos Caniego, a research visitor of Mike Hobson from Cambridge, etc. • 2007-2011: Collaborative supervision with M. Hobson and A. Lasenby of PhD student Pedro Carvalho on ‘A fast Bayesian approach to discrete object detection in astronomical datasets - PowellSnakes’. • 2011-2012: Group Supervisor of the ’Evolution of Galaxies’ group at JPL. Grac¸a Rocha 5
• Actively working/mentoring Planck PostDocs: Luca Pagano, Sanjit Mitra wok on beams: FEBeCoP; Loris Colombo work on Power Spectrum and Likelihoods: XFaster, PIXFaster; Davide Pietrobon work on Component separation: Commander • Mentor of several of my visitors such as: Shirley Ho LBL, Berkeley; Katherine Mack University of Cambridge, UK; Davide Oliveira University of Porto, Portugal; Diogo Pinheiro University of Aveiro, Portugal; Gioia Rau La Sapienza, Rome, Italy; Alexandre Barreira University of Porto, Portugal, Eloisa Menegoni - La Sapienza, Rome, Italy. • Member of a PhD exam committee at Caltech for the Theoretical Astrophysics Group
2.4 Organizational experience
• 1999: Member of the Scientific Organizing Committee of the ‘International Conference on Modern The- ories of Structure Formation’, held in Porto, CAUP, September 13-18, 1999. • 2000: Member of the Local Organizing Committee of the CMBNET meeting, held at Oxford, first week of December 2000. • 2002: Co-organizer of a JENAM (Joint European National Astronomical Meeting) 2002 workshop ‘The Cosmology of Extra Dimensions and Varying Fundamental Constants’, held at Porto on September 3-5. • 2001-2005: Organizer of the Cosmo-lunch seminars held weekly at DAMTP, Cambridge. • Organizer and coordinator of the Compact Source Investigation, CSI, collaboration amongst IPAC, Santander, Cambridge, Paris, and Santander . This collaboration was set up to help build up the compact source detection pipeline for production of the Early Release Compact Source Catalog at IPAC, an US official Planck deliverable. • 2008: Co-organizer with William Reach of the Planck Point Source workshop hosted at IPAC in February 2008, with broad attendance (37 registered) across project including Planck Principal Investigators, PI’s . Contact point for several of the participants. • 2008: Member of the Local Organizing Committee, LOC of the conference on ‘CMB component sepa- ration and the physics of foregrounds’, July 14-18, 2008 Pasadena, California • 2010/11: Co-organizer of the AstroLunch, AL, Sessions at JPL • Member of the Scientific Organizing Committee, SOC of the Workshop on The Growing Demands on Connectivity and Information Processing in Radio Astronomy from VLBI to the SKA, 24th -25th of May 2011, Instituto de Telecomunicacoes, Aveiro, Portugal • Member of the Local Organizing Committee, LOC and Co-PI of the ‘Azores School on Observational Cosmology 31 August to 6 September 2011, Angra do Heroismo, Azores-Portugal • Chair of Cosmo11 International Conference on Particle Physics and Cosmology 22-26 August 2011, Porto, Portugal • since 2012: Co-organizer of the Colloquia Sessions at JPL
2.5 Refereeing experience
• Referee for the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society Journal (MNRAS). • Referee for the Astrophysical Journal (ApJ). • Referee for the Modern Physics Letters A (MPLA). • Scientific consultant for the Scientific and Technical Translation to Portuguese Prize Award. ( for instance on the book ’The Elegant Universe’ by Brain R. Green translated from english to portuguese by Joao˜ Pi- mentel and Ricardo Schiama.) • Member of the Editorial Board for International Scholarly Research Network (ISRN) Astronomy and Astrophysics Grac¸a Rocha 6
3 Scholarships and Awards
• 1990-1991 - JNICT scholarship for research in Optics and its applications in the University of Porto. • 1991-1992 - JNICT MSc scholarship for research in the University of London. • 1993 -1996 - JNICT PhD scholarship for research in the University of Cambridge. • 1997-1998 - Postdoctoral Fellowship (NSF grant with matching support from the State of Kansas and from a K*STAR First award) for research in the Kansas State University. • 1998-2001 - Postdoctoral Fellowship by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) for research at the Center for Astrophysics of the University of Porto (CAUP). • 2001-2005 - Leverhulme Fellowship for research in the University of Cambridge. • NASA Honors Awards
– June 2009 Planck Data Analysis Team - Group Achievement Award – June 2009 Planck Data Analysis Pipeline Development Team - Group Achievement Award – June 2009 BICEP Experiment Team - Group Achievement Award – July 2011 Herschel & Planck Projects Teams - Group Achievement Honor Award for work on the Herschel & Planck Projects. – July 2011 Planck Data Analysis and Operations Support Team - Group Achievement Award for the Planck data analysis and operations support team in successfully achieving the Planck minimum mis- sion. – July 2011 Early Release Compact Source Catalogue Team - Group Achievement Award for successful delivery ahead of schedule to the European Processing Centers of the Planck Early Release Compact Source Catalogue ahead of schedule.
• JPL awards – 2010 Certificate of Recognition for 5 years of service to JPL – 2011 Planck Effective Beamshape Team - Team Bonus Award for the development and implementation of software to calculate the effective beamshape of the Planck feeds for the Planck Early Release Compact Source Catalog.
4 Other technical details
Co-developer of various algorithms and data analysis methodologies, such as:
• NGsims - algorithm to generate CMB Non-Gaussian simulations • TOPOLsims - algorithm to generate Compact Topologies • Bispectrum estimator for interferometers code to estimate the bispectrum on interferometric data • BayesNG - algorithm for Bayesian joint estimation of CMB angular power spectrum and Non-Gaussianity • SCR Likelihood - algorithm to estimate the new ‘SCR’ Likelihood that corrects for the bias of WMAP like when the signal is Non-Gaussian • PowellSnakes - algorithm to detect discrete objects (eg point sources) immersed in a diffuse background • MCBR, Markov Chain Beam Randomization - method to propagate beam uncertainties to cosmological parameter estimation • FEBeCoP - algorithm to estimate the effective beam for Planck scan strategy and generate fast effective beam convolutions in pixel space Grac¸a Rocha 7
• involved in development of Healpix - NGsims has been recently incorporated in the Healpix v2.11 • involved in development of XFaster, a Power Spectrum and Likelihood estimation algorithm, with a view to Planck • involved in the development CosmoMC (by inclusion of XFaster likelihood module in the runs), a MCMC Parameter estimation algorithm • involved in development CAMB and CMBFAST algorithms (by changing specifically RECFAST) to com- pute the CMB Power Spectrum, Cl for a varying fine structure constant , α
Familiar with various CMB codes and with several stages of the Planck data analysis, such as:
• Planck LevelS pipeline for generation of timelines, TOD
• Springtide - a destripper Mapmaking algorithm • PSM - a Planck Sky model pipeline • Commander - a Power Spectrum estimator and Component Separation algorithm based on the Gibbs methodology
• CAMB and CMBFAST - algorithms to compute the CMB Power Spectrum, Cl
• PICO - a fast estimator of the CMB Power Spectrum, Cl • CosmoMC - a MCMC Parameter estimation algorithm • WMAP Like - WMAP likelihood code for parameter estimation
• HEALPix - acronym for Hierarchical Equal Area isoLatitude Pixelization of a sphere. • Programming Languages: very familiar with Fortran, IDL, and acquainted with C, C++ and Python.
Languages
• Fluent in Portuguese, English and French.