The Tuttle Group:

My group is a mix of folks with unique expertise across career stages, including students and engineers.

Brianna Taylor (Grad student)

Brianna joined us from Howard University where she completed her Bachelor’s degree. She is working with HETDEX (Hobby Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment) data to understand how Lyman Alpha halos evolve with time (during the peak of star formation), and to search for evidence of the CGM.

Myles McKay (Grad student)

Myles came to the group after working at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STSci), after finishing his Bachelor’s degree at South Carolina State University. He studies the BreakBRD galaxies using integral field data from the SDSS-IV MaNGA project, looking for hints as to why these galaxies preferentially form stars centrally.

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Emily Farr (Researcher)

Emily is a UW graduate and started with SDSS-IV before becoming a technician and ruler of the fiber lab.

Travis Mandeville (Technician)

Travis is a UW Astronomy graduate who comes from a background in Finance. He has split his time since graduation working as a technician for SDSS-IV and V, supporting fiber plug plates, Educational and Outreach for SDSS, and working in the Finance office for ARC.

David Stark (Postdoctoral Researcher)

David joins us after his work as a Postdoc for HI MaNGA at Haverford College.

Conor Sayres (Grad/SDSS-V)

Conor has been with SDSS since his undergraduate days at the University of Washington. He started working in the fiber plug plate infrastructure, and moved through many roles before moving into his current role as a software engineer. He completed as Masters degree in the interim in Applied Math, and then joined the UW PhD program where he is currently a graduate student. He is currently focused on building tools in support of the SDSS Focal Plane System which replaces the plug plate focal plane.

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Kal Kadlec (Optical Engineer)

Kal comes to us after graduating with a M.S. in Optical Sciences from the University of Arizona. He led the KOSMOS spectrograph recommissioning, including the design and build of the n

José Sanchez-Gallego (Research Professor/SDSS-V)

José has been working with SDSS data since his time as a graduate student at the University of Kentucky, and is one of the folks behind the SDSS-IV MaNGA Marvin spectroscopy tool. He is leading work to support the software infrastructure to enable the SDSS-V hardware upgrades and coming observations with the SDSS-V FPS.

 

Past Group Members

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Debby Tran

Debby joined us after working as a Post Bacc at UCSD in support of instrumentation at Gemini Observatory. She worked to update and finalize a process for making reflective spectrograph slits in the UW Nanofab, building off work done by Jason Lazo.

Sean Fillingham

Sean joined us after completing his PhD at UC Irvine working on better understanding galaxy evolution through studying environmental quenching with his advisor Michael Cooper, and their collaborators. He joined the BreakBRDs collaboration to see if we could find evidence for environmental quenching by directly studying the gas of these systems.

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Rishi Pahuja

Rishi joined us after completing his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at the UW. He came with interest and expertise in 3D printed materials. He was central to the efforts to recommission the KOSMOS spectrograph at APO, and worked in support of the fiber slit for SDSS-V. He now works for Caltech Optical Observatories.