https://www.vandanadesai.com/data daily 0.75 2022-06-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/1cd97829-b44b-4e9b-b98e-4c7bea53a144/Screen+Shot+2022-05-31+at+9.48.08+PM.png Data - Science platform I provide leadership within the NASA Astrophysics archives to develop science platform capabilities that will bring together the big data, computing, and software that is necessary for astronomical analyses in the 2020s. Related Article https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/bb74caf7-144c-4ef8-87e1-0a96439aea4a/irsa_poster_PR2020.jpeg Data - NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive I am the Science Lead for the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive (IRSA). IRSA is chartered to curate the science products of NASA's infrared and submillimeter missions, including many large-area and all-sky surveys. In total, IRSA provides access to about a trillion astronomical measurements, including all-sky coverage in 29 bands. Approximately 15% of all refereed astronomical journal articles cite data sets curated by IRSA. In addition to observational data sets, IRSA provides access to simulated data that supports planning, analysis, and interpretation of NASA mission data. Related Articles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/986777e3-1da6-486a-9572-485c05487f14/Screen+Shot+2022-05-31+at+9.50.32+PM.png Data - Data visualization I am part of the leadership team that prioritizes development for “Firefly by IPAC”, an interactive web user interface for astronomical data access and exploration. In development since 2011, Firefly was originally developed for the Spitzer Heritage Archive, but the toolkit has since been adopted to build data portals for a number of projects, including WISE, Planck, PTF, and ZTF. In the future, Firefly will be used to discover and engage with data from Euclid, SPHEREx, and Rubin. Related Articles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/48f2ada2-c8af-41c9-9351-35da4418419e/Screen+Shot+2022-05-31+at+9.43.16+PM.png Data - International Virtual Observatory Alliance I advocate for the needs of scientists as a member of the IVOA Committee for Science Priorities. The mission of the IVOA is to "facilitate the international coordination and collaboration necessary for the development and deployment of the tools, systems and organizational structures necessary to enable the international utilization of astronomical archives as an integrated and interoperating virtual observatory." https://www.vandanadesai.com/home daily 1.0 2022-06-17 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/144820f8-fe43-4e17-ad16-06949fc7ae96/Vandana_Desai_2019.jpg Home Vandana earned a bachelor's degree in astronomy from Caltech and a Ph.D. in astronomy from the University of Washington. She was a postdoc at Caltech in the "Infrared Army" before joining Caltech/IPAC. At IPAC she has gained several years of experience in project management as an IRSA science lead or deputy science lead, including strategic planning and organizational leadership. Her research centers on galaxy formation and evolution, especially on the role of luminous and ultra-luminous infrared galaxies in the formation of stars and black holes, and the dependence of galaxy properties on environment. https://www.vandanadesai.com/research daily 0.75 2022-06-18 https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/1363830e-899e-43b6-ab76-c715b554a6c9/virgo_filaments.png Research - Virgo Filaments It is well established that galaxies residing within clusters tend to have systematically different properties compared to galaxies in lower-density regions. We are measuring the gas content of galaxies within filaments and groups up to several virial radii from the center of the Virgo cluster in order to understand whether galaxies are pre-processed within these environments before they enter dense cluster cores. Related Journal Articles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/6325d417-c7ae-464d-ad37-82ba933b9d39/dogs.png Research - Dust Obscured Galaxies Using large-area survey images obtained with the Spitzer Space Telescope, NASA’s Infrared Great Observatory, we discovered a rare population of galaxies that are very bright in the mid-infrared but nearly invisible at optical wavelengths. Follow-up observations using ground- and space-based facilities revealed these galaxies to be sites of rapid star formation and AGN activity at cosmological lookback times of over 13 billion years. Related Journal Articles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/ecfc724f-87ae-42ea-b884-9b2cedaec6c7/local_cluster_survey.jpeg Research - Local Cluster Survey The goal of the Local Cluster Survey is to look for evidence of environmentally-driven quenching among star-forming galaxies in nearby galaxy groups and clusters. Many previous investigations relied on the integrated properties of galaxies. However, the relative size of the stellar and star-forming disk is sensitive to environmental processing and can help identify the mechanisms that lead to a large fraction of quenched galaxies in dense environments. Our analysis is consistent with a long-timescale (>2Gyr) mechanism that produces outside-in quenching, such as the removal of the extended gas halo or weak stripping of the cold disk gas. Related Journal Article https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/3e49f22e-b705-4fad-afc5-b1f4a26b7bfe/Screen+Shot+2022-05-31+at+8.50.03+PM.png Research - Galaxy Evolution in Distant Clusters My dissertation focused on the European Southern Observatory Distant Cluster Survey (EDisCS). The goal of the survey was to enable studies of the evolution of cluster galaxies over more than 50% of cosmic time. EDisCS was carried out by an international consortium of 25 astronomers from 6 countries. Related Journal Articles https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/62964e1bb4b2c21055e3005a/a325c263-5748-4ecd-9a25-7368dca4e5c5/local_ulirgs.gif Research - Ultraluminous infrared galaxies The Infrared Spectrograph on the Spitzer Space Telescope enabled detailed analyses of the mid-infrared spectra of ultraluminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) in the local universe. Related Journal Articles