Rachel Somerville

Dr. Rachel Somerville is a senior research scientist at the Flatiron Institute Center for Computational Astrophysics.

Talk title: “Working towards a new paradigm for understanding galaxy formation and constraining cosmology”

Abstract: A new generation of multi-tracer surveys has the potential to yield huge progress in our understanding of galaxy formation and cosmology, but only if we can overcome certain challenges. These include accurately modeling the intertwined effects of baryonic processes and the nature of dark matter and dark energy, as well as incorporating diverse types of data and observational tracers into a robust statistical framework. I will discuss the Simulating Multiscale Astrophysics to Understand Galaxies (SMAUG) and Learning the Universe projects and how we are working towards building more robust sub-grid models for astrophysical processes in simulations, developing accelerated forward models using machine learning, creating detailed multi-probe synthetic observations, and folding all of these elements into a Simulation Based Inference pipeline.