Contacts¶
Leadership¶
Principal Investigator
srk@astro.caltech.edu
Shri Kulkarni is Caltech’s George Ellery Hale Professor of Astronomy and Planetary Science. He has played a central role in modern time-domain astronomy through leadership in major transient surveys including the Palomar Transient Factory and the Zwicky Transient Facility.
Co-Principal Investigator
mansi@astro.caltech.edu
Mansi Kasliwal is Professor of Astronomy at Caltech and Director of Palomar Observatory. Her research focuses on supernovae, kilonovae, neutron-star mergers, and other fast transients, and she is a leading figure in survey-driven time-domain astronomy.
Instrument Architect
jibailey@caltech.edu
Jeb Bailey is a astronomer and staff engineer at Caltech with two decades of experience in astronomical instrumentation spanning spectrographs for Magellan and Keck, superconducting photon-counting cameras, autonomous observatories, fiber systems, embedded electronics, and data-reduction pipelines.
Science Team Lead
fremling@caltech.edu
Christoffer Fremling is a staff astronomer at Caltech whose work focuses on supernovae and time-domain astronomy. He leads the ZTF Bright Transient Survey and developed the SNIascore machine-learning system for automated supernova classification.
Project Management¶
Project Manager
Richard Dekany is the assistant director of Caltech’s optical and infrared instrumentation group and an adaptive-optics leader with a long record of major AO system design and observatory instrument development. His work spans Keck and thirty-meter-class AO architecture, Palomar AO development, and multiple current instrumentation efforts.
Systems Engineer
Jocelyn Ferrara is ZShooter’s Systems Engineer. She has significant prior science-operations and instrumentation experience, including from her time at Gemini with efforts in operations and system integration. She is also systems engineer for the LRIS2 and HISPEC instruments.
WKMO Instrument Program Manager
Marc Kassis is Instrument Program Manager at the W. M. Keck Observatory. He has long been a key figure in Keck instrument development, observatory interfaces, and program-level coordination across the Keck instrument suite.
Subsystem Leads¶
Optical Lead
Jason Fucik is an optical instrumentation engineer at Caltech with extensive experience in spectrograph and optical-system design. He has held major roles in WFOS, LRIS-2, and other large observatory instrumentation efforts.
ZImager Optical Engineer
Dan Reiley is an Instrument Engineer at Caltech. He has contributed to NGPS and ZShooter optical development as part of Caltech’s current spectrograph instrumentation program.
Mechanical Lead
Bob Weber is part of the Caltech instrumentation team and has contributed to major optical-instrument development efforts including LRIS-2, KWFI, and ZShooter. His work has centered on the mechanical realization of advanced observatory instruments.
Software & Controls Lead
Prakriti Gupta works on instrument software, integration, and detector-facing systems within the Caltech observatory instrumentation program. She has contributed to NGPS, HISPEC, and ZShooter development.
Simulator & DRP Lead
Yashvi Sharma is a Caltech astronomer whose work combines supernova science, survey data, and machine learning. Her research includes the ZTF Bright Transient Survey, metamorphic supernovae, and AI-enabled classification tools such as CCSNscore.
Detector Lead
Roger Smith is Electronics Group Lead at Caltech’s Optical Observatory group and a long-time detector and instrumentation engineer. He has led major detector development efforts including the ZTF camera and continues to work on advanced focal-plane and low-noise detector systems.