Professional Background

My research interests are related to cosmology, astronomical image processing, big data and machine learning. I have worked on several large optical surveys targeted to understand the nature of dark energy including: the Dark Energy Survey, the Hyper-Suprime Cam Survey and most recently the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). Most of my work involves building the software pipeline to process, analyze and extract information from the raw pixel data and prepare them for downstream analysis. Before transitioning to astronomy, my thesis work focused on neutrino oscillations for the MINOS experiment at Fermilab.

 

Professional Activities

Member of the LSST Dark Energy Survey Science Collaboration

• Elected as full member (2021)
• Co-convener of the Weak Lensing working group (2020-2022)
• Funded as pipeline scientist (2018-present)

Member of the Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) Collaboration

• Given External Participant status for substantial contributions to HSC (2018)
• Given Builder status for fundamental contributions to HSC (2017)

Member of the Dark Energy Survey

• Given builder status for fundamental contributions to DES (2011)

Reviewer of LLNL Institutional Computing Grand Challenge allocations 2019, 2020

Referee for MNRAS Letters

Ph.D., Physics - Department of Physics, Indiana University, 2009

B.S., Physics - Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Utah, 2004

Sanchez B., Kessler R., Scolnic D., Armstrong R., et al.,SNIa Cosmology Analysis Results from Simulated LSST Images: From Difference Imaging to Constraints on Dark Energy,2022, ApJ, 934, 96. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac7a37

Li X., Miyatake H., …, Armstrong, R., et al.,The three-year shear catalog of the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam SSP Survey ,2022, PASJ, 74, 421. doi:10.1093/pasj/psac006

Muyskens A., Goumiri I., Priest B., Schneider M., Armstrong R., et al.,Star-Galaxy Image Separation with Computationally Efficient Gaussian Process Classification, 2022, AJ, 163, 148. doi:10.3847/1538-3881/ac4e93

Buchanan J., Schneider M., Armstrong R., et al., Gaussian Process Classification for Galaxy Blend Identification in LSST,2022, ApJ, 924, 94. doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ac35ca

Golovich N., Lifset N., Armstrong R., et al.,, A New Blind Asteroid Detection Scheme, 2021, arXiv, arXiv:2104.03411

LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration, et al., The LSST DESC DC2 Simulated Sky Survey, 2021, ApJS, 253, 31. doi:10.3847/1538-4365/abd62c

Mandelbaum, R., Miyatake, H., …, Armstrong, R., et al.; The first-year shear catalog of the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam Subaru Strategic Program Survey; Publications of the National Society of Japan, 80, SP1 (2018)

Mandelbaum, R., Lanusse, F., …, Armstrong, R., et al.; Weak lensing shear calibration with simulations of the HSC survey; Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 481, 3 (2018)

Bosch, J., Armstrong, R., et al.; The Hyper Suprime-Cam software pipeline; Publications of the National Society of Japan, 2018, 70S, 5B

Coulton, W. R., Armstrong, R., et al.; Exploring the Brighter-fatter Effect with the Hyper Suprime-Cam; The Astronomical Journal, 155, 6 (2018)

Bernstein, G. M., Abbot, T. M. C., Armstrong, R., et al.; Photometric Characterization of the Dark Energy Camera; Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 130, 987 (2018)

Bernstein, G. M., Armstrong, R., et al.; Astrometric Calibration and Performance of the Dark energy Camera; Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 129, 977 (2017)

Bernstein, G. M., Armstrong, R., et al.; An accurate and practical method for inference of weak gravitational lensing from galaxy images; Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 459, 4 (2016)

Bernstein, G. M., Armstrong, R., Bayesian lensing shear measurement; Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 438, 2 (2014)

Morganson, E., Gruendl, R. A., …, Armstrong, R., et al.; The Dark Energy Survey Image Processing Pipeline; Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 130, 989 (2018)

Desai, S., Armstrong, R., et al.; The Blanco Cosmology Survey: Data Acquisition, Processing, Calibration, Quality Diagnostics, and Data Release; The Astrophysical Journal, 757, 1 (2012)