Vita ! 1

Bibliography ! 4

Grants! 10

Committees! 11

Peer Review! 12

Conferences and Workshops ! 12

Educational and Outreach Activities! 15

Personal Statement! 16

US Virtual Astronomical Observatory! 18

VAO Data Discover Tool

US VAO User Forum: astrobabel.com

User Support, Training, and Documentation

CfA VAO activities

The Seamless Astronomy Group! 21

Astronomy Dataverse

ADS All Sky Survey

VitaCurriculum Vitae for August Muench

PERSONAL

Astrophysicist, Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

Legal Name: August Muench-Nasrallah

Date of Birth: 19 August 1973

Place of Birth: Tampa, Florida, United States of America

Address: 60 Garden Street, Mail Stop 42

Cambridge, MA 02138

Office Phone: (617) 495-7979

Work Email: gmuench@cfa.harvard.edu

Work Website: https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~gmuench

Personal Email: august.fly@gmail.com

Web Profile: https://google.com/+AugustMuench

Twitter: @augustmuench

EMPLOYMENT

2009- Astrophysicist (Trust), Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory

2008-2009 Research Associate, Harvard College Observatory

2003-2008 Postdoctoral Fellow; Visiting Scientist, SAO

2002-2003 Postdoctoral Associate, Spitzer Science Center

EDUCATION

2002 Ph.D Astronomy, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida

1995 B.Sci Physics, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia

RESEARCH GRANTS

Co-PI, 2011 NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program

“The ADS All Sky Survey” NNH11ZDA001N-ADAP; $399954 (PI: Alyssa Goodman, SAO award, $25751)

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PI, 2009 NASA ROSES Supplemental Public Outreach Program

“Explaining Multi-wavelength Star Formation with Microsoft Research’s The WorldWide Telescope Software” $20000

PI, 2007 NASA Astrophysics Data Analysis Program (at SAO)

“Constraining the stellar initial mass function through a broad spectrum archival study of star forming regions” NNX08AJ66G-ADAP: $398139

PI, 2007 Spitzer Space Telescope Archive Research (at HCO)

“Constraints on the stellar IMF with Spitzer” Proposal #40008: $106363

PROJECTS

US Virtual Astrophysical Observatory

User Support

VAO Data Discovery Tool

Professional Outreach

Seamless Astronomy Group

Astronomy Dataverse Network

The ADS All Sky Survey

Microsoft Research’s WorldWide Telescope

MEMBERSHIPS IN PROFESSIONAL SOCIETIES

American Astronomical Society (2002-)

SERVICE

Societal Service as member of the AAS Committee on Employment (2012-)

Journal Referee for the AJ, ApJ, A&A

NASA Grant Panel Referee (2009, 2010)

Observatory Panel Referee (CFHT)

Referee for other Scientific Conferences and Books (SciPy, O’Reilly Press)

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EXPERIENCE

Data & Libraries

Collaborate with Harvard's Wolbach Library and IQSS to implement a digital repository for Astrophysical data, using the Dataverse platform. I provide specifications for domain specific changes to Dataverse, perform data interviews, manage and curate metadata, run workshops and trainings.

Technology & Training

Build new astronomy software by contributing quality assurance, testing, multifaceted user support. I develop tutorial curriculum, organize software training events, write technical documentation for scientific computing applications and languages. Manage the Seamless Astronomy Group.

Scientific Research

Principal Investigator for a NASA funded, panchromatic, archival study of star formation. I coordinate research group members, construct and use large databases, perform scientific analysis, write papers, conduct online public outreach using Microsoft's Worldwide Telescope.

SUMMARY OF RELATED SKILLS

Author on 36 refereed publications (7 as lead)

Principal investigator on multiple highly competed grants (>$525000)

Extensive experience organizing, creating curriculum for, and running software training workshops for scientists

Community leader as member of scientific society’s Committee on Employment

Proficient in Python, Fortran, and IDL programming languages

Proficient in use of virtual observatory toolkits, including web database APIs

Experienced in web content creation, including content management systems (Drupal, Wordpress), static HTML web generation (Sphinx/Pelican), and related markdown languages (reST, Markdown)

Experienced with creation, management, and use of SQL databases

Experienced with software quality assurance and testing; Confluence; Trac; etc

Working knowledge of UNIX, Linux, and Mac OSX operating systems

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Bibliography

A real time ADS search for articles published in astronomy by myself can be found at: http://bit.ly/ADS4AMuench

PRESENTATIONS

“Outreach is about Access”, 18 June 2010. AstroInformatics2010, Pasadena, CA. Contributed

“Data Publication & Citation practices in Astronomy”, 25 May 2011. The Literature-Data Connection: Meaning, Infrastructure and Impact (Special Session), AAS 118, Boston, MA. Invited

“The Astronomy Dataverse,” 22 May 2012. Data Publication, Data Sharing and Linking, IVOA Interop Meeting 2012. Contributed

“The Astronomy Dataverse”, 10 July 2012. The .Astronomy 4 Conference, Haus der Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany. Contributed

“The Astronomy Dataverse”, 11 September 2012. 2012 Digitization Fair, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. Contributed

“Seamless Astronomy: social, sharing and software aspects of networked astronomy”, 2 October 2012. Astronomy & Space Physics Seminar, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Delaware. Invited

REVIEW ARTICLES

Muench, A. A., Getman, K., Hillenbrand, L., and Preibisch, T. 2008,

“Star Formation in the Orion Nebula I: Stellar Content,”

Handbook of Star Forming Regions, Volume 1: The Northern Sky,

ASP Monograph Publications, Vol. 4., Edited by Bo Reipurth, p.483

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O'Dell, C. R., Muench, A. A., Smith, N., and Zapata, L. 2008,

“Star Formation in the Orion Nebula II: Gas, Dust, Proplyds and Outflows,”

Handbook of Star Forming Regions, Volume 1: The Northern Sky,

ASP Monograph Publications, Vol. 4., Edited by Bo Reipurth, p.544

ARTICLES SUBMITTED OR IN PREPARATION

Chavarria, L., Allen, L., Brunt, C., Hora, J., Muench, A., Fazio, G. 2014, “A multi-wavelength study of embedded clusters in W5-east, NGC7538, S235, S252 and S254-S258,” Submitted to MNRAS

Pepe, A., Goodman, A., Muench, A., Crosas, M., and Erdmann, C. 2014,

“Sharing, archiving, and citing data in astronomy,” Submitted to PLOS One. See: https://authorea.com/288

Azimlu, M., Muench, A., Martínez-Galarza, R. J., “WISE Selected Young Star Candidates in the Perseus OB2 Association,” in preparation. See: https://authorea.com/2888

PUBLISHED ARTICLES

Muench, A. A., Lada, E. A., and Lada, C. J. 2000, “Modeling the Near-Infrared Luminosity Functions of Young Stellar Clusters,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 533, pp. 358-371

Lada, C. J., Muench, A. A., Haisch, K. E., Lada, E. A., Alves, J. F., Tollestrup, E. V., and Willner, S. P. 2000, “Infrared L-Band Observations of the Trapezium Cluster: A Census of Circumstellar Disks and Candidate Protostars,” Astronomical Journal, Volume 120, pp. 3162-3176.

Muench, A. A., Alves, J., Lada, C. J., and Lada, E. A. 2001, “Evidence for Circumstellar Disks around Young Brown Dwarfs in the Trapezium Cluster,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 558, pp. L51-L54.

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Muench, A. A., Lada, E. A., Lada, C. J., and Alves, J. 2002, “The Luminosity and Mass Function of the Trapezium Cluster: From B Stars to the Deuterium-burning Limit,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 573, pp. 366-393.

Muench, A. A., Lada, E. A., Lada, C. J., Elston, R. J., Alves, J. F., et. Al., 2003, “A Study of the Luminosity and Mass Functions of the Young IC 348 Cluster,” Astronomical Journal, Volume 125, pp. 2029-2049.

Stauffer, J. R., Jones, B. F., Backman, D., Hartmann, L. W., Barrado y Navascues, D., Pinsonneault, M. H., Terndrup, D. M., and Muench, A. A. 2003,

“Why Are the K Dwarfs in the Pleiades So Blue?," Astronomical Journal, Volume 126, pp. 833-847.

Luhman, K. L., Stauffer, J. R., Muench, A. A., Rieke, G. H., Lada, E. A., Bouvier, J., and Lada, C. J. 2003, “A Census of the Young Cluster IC 348,”

Astrophysical Journal, Volume 593, pp. 1093-1115.

Lada, C. J., Muench, A. A., Lada, E. A., and Alves, J. F. 2004, “Deep 3.8 Micron Observations of the Trapezium Cluster,” Astronomical Journal, Volume 128, pp. 1254-1264.

Feigelson, E. D., Getman, K., Townsley, L., Garmire, G., Preibisch, T., Grosso, N., Montmerle, T., Muench, A., and McCaughrean, M. 2005, “Global X-Ray Properties of the Orion Nebula Region,” Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Volume 160, pp. 379-389.

Grosso, N., Feigelson, E. D., Getman, K. V., Townsley, L., Broos, P., Flaccomio, E., McCaughrean, M. J., Micela, G., Sciortino, S., Bally, J., Smith, N., Muench, A. A., Garmire, G. P., and Palla, F. 2005, “Chandra Orion Ultradeep Project Census of X-Ray Stars in the BN-KL and OMC-1S Regions,” Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Volume 160, pp. 530-556.

Luhman, K. L., Lada, C. J., Hartmann, L., Muench, A. A., Megeath, S. T., Allen, L. E., Myers, P. C., Muzerolle, J., Young, E., and Fazio, G. G. 2005, “The Disk

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Fractions of Brown Dwarfs in IC 348 and Chamaeleon I,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 631, pp. L69-L72.

Teixeira, P. S., Lada, C. J., Young, E. T., Marengo, M., Muench, A., Muzerolle, J., Siegler, N., Rieke, G., Hartmann, L., Megeath, S. T., and Fazio, G. 2005, “Identifying Primordial Substructure in NGC 2264," Astrophysical Journal, Volume 636, pp. L45-L48.

Lada, C. J., Muench, A. A., Luhman, K. L., Allen, L., Hartmann, L., Megeath, T., Myers, P., Fazio, G., Wood, K., Muzerolle, J., Rieke, G., Siegler, N., and Young, E. 2005, “Spitzer Observations of IC348: The Disk Population at 2-3 Million Years,” Astronomical Journal, Volume 131, pp. 1574-1607.

Muzerolle, J., Adame, L., D'Alessio, P., Calvet, N., Luhman, K. L., Muench, A. A., Lada, C. J., Rieke, G. H., Siegler, N., Trilling, D. E., Young, E. T., Allen, L., Hartmann, L., Megeath, S. T. 2006, “24 m Detections of Circum(sub)stellar Disks in IC 348: Grain Growth and Inner Holes?,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 643, pp. 1003-1010.

Zapata, L. A., Ho, P. T. P., Rodriguez, L. F., O'Dell, C. R., Zhang, Q., and Muench, A. 2006, “Silicon Monoxide Observations Reveal a Cluster of Hidden Compact Outflows in the OMC 1 South Region,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 653, pp. 398-408.

Muench, A. A., Lada, C. J., Luhman, K. L.; Muzerolle, J., and Young, E. 2007,

“A Spitzer Census of the IC 348 Nebula,” Astronomical Journal, Volume 134, pp. 411-444.

Roman-Zuniga, C. G., Lada, C. J., Muench, A., and Alves, J. F. 2007, “The Infrared Extinction Law at Extreme Depth in a Dark Cloud Core,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 664, pp. 357-362.

Muench, A. A., Lada, C. J., Rathborne, J. M., Alves, J. F., and Lombardi, M. 2007, “The Nature of the Dense Core Population in the Pipe Nebula:

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Core and Cloud Kinematics from C18O Observations,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 671, pp. 1820-1831.

Lada, C. J., Muench, A. A., Rathborne, J. M., Alves, J. F., and Lombardi, M. 2008, “The Nature of the Dense Core Population in the Pipe Nebula: Thermal Cores Under Pressure,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 672, pp. 410-422.

Rathborne, J. M., Lada, C. J., Alves, Muench, A. A., J. F., and Lombardi, M. 2008, “The Nature of the Dense Core Population in the Pipe Nebula:

A Survey of NH3, CCS, and HC5N Molecular Line Emission,”

Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series, Volume 174, pp. 396-425.

Tappe, A., Lada, C. J., Black, J. H., and Muench, A. A. 2008,

“Discovery of Superthermal Hydroxyl (OH) in the HH 211 Outflow,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 680, pp. L117-L120.

Luhman, K. L. and Muench, A. A. 2008, “New Low-Mass Stars and Brown Dwarfs with Disks in the Chamaeleon I Star-Forming Region,”

Astrophysical Journal, Volume 684, pp. 654-662.

Forbrich, J., Lada, C. J., Muench, A. A., and Teixeira, P. S. 2008, “New M Dwarf Debris Disk Candidates in NGC 2547,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 687, pp. 1107-1116.

Luhman, K. L., Mamajek, E. E., Allen, P. R., Muench, A. A., and Finkbeiner, D. P. 2009, “Discovery of a Wide Binary Brown Dwarf Born in Isolation,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 691, pp. 1265-1275.

Rathborne, J. M., Lada, C. J., Muench, A. A., Alves, J. F., Kainulainen, J., and Lombardi, M. 2009, “Dense cores in the Pipe Nebula: An improved core mass function,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 699, pp. 742-753.

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Baxter, E. J., Covey, K. R., Muench, A. A., Furesz, G., Rebull, L., Szentgyorgyi, A. H. 2009, “The Distance to NGC 2264,” Astronomical Journal, Volume 138, pp. 963-974.

Muzerolle, J. and 11 colleagues 2009, “Evidence for Dynamical Changes in a Transitional Protoplanetary Disk with Mid-Infrared Variability,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 704, pp. L15-L19.

Forbrich, J., Lada, C. J., Muench, A. A., Alves, J., Lombardi, M. 2009, “A Spitzer Census of Star Formation Activity in the Pipe Nebula,”

Astrophysical Journal, Volume 704, pp. 292-305.

Forbrich, J., and 7 colleagues 2010, “Disentangling Protostellar Evolutionary Stages in Clustered Environments Using Spitzer-IRS Spectra and Comprehensive Spectral Energy Distribution Modeling,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 716, pp. 1453-1477.

Covey, K. R., Lada, C. J., Roman-Zuniga, C. G., Muench, A. A., Forbrich, J., Ascenso, J. 2010, “The Age, Stellar Content, and Star Formation Timescale of the B59 Dense Core,” Astrophysical Journal, Volume 722, pp. 971-988.

Goodman, A., Fay, J., Muench, A., Pepe, A., Udompraseret, P., and Wong, C. 2012, “WorldWide Telescope in Research and Education,” Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXI, 461, 267.

Pepe, A., Goodman, A., and Muench, A. 2012, “The ADS All-Sky Survey,” Astronomical Data Analysis Software and Systems XXI, 461, 275.

Simpson, R. J., Lintott, C., Bauer, A., and 9 colleagues 2013, “Unproceedings of the Fourth .Astronomy Conference (.Astronomy 4), Heidelberg, Germany, July 9-11 2012,” arXiv:1301.5193

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Grants

During the past five years I have been principal investigator on one NASA funded grant, one EPO supplemental grant, and co-investigator (PI for Smithsonian sub-award) for another NASA grant. Under these grants I have engaged in scientific research, public outreach, and software development; I have mentored a postdoctoral fellow and a summer intern who were supported by these grants (Education & Outreach Section).

Archival Studies of Star Forming Regions I applied for and was awarded funds by the NASA ADAP program to undertake a large archive based survey of star forming regions. This grant was awarded while I was a Visiting Scientist at the SAO (2007). I transitioned jobs from the SAO to Harvard College Observatory for a 1 year stint (2008-2009) working on the WorldWide Telescope project at the Institute for Innovative Computing, while the grant remained at SAO. After my return to SAO and two job searches (2009, 2010) for a suitable postdoctoral fellow, I hired M. Azimlu to the CfA from 2011-2014.

The 2.5 years Dr. Azimlu has put into this project have been both fruitful and discouraging. The large databases of YSO photometry anticipated in the original proposal were never produced by a collaborator. We had to shift the scope of the project to target fewer regions with fully public datasets. Dr. Azimlu had to come up to speed with using a number of data analysis toolkits, including SQL and VO technologies. Data were hard to extract from archives.

Nevertheless we are close to completing a paper (Azimlu, M., Muench, A., Martínez-Galarza, R. J., “WISE Selected Young Star Candidates in the Perseus OB2 Association”) from this research. I also received a Public Outreach supplement to this award for the creation of multimedia tours of the data. Please see the Education and Outreach appendix for more details.

The ADS All Sky Survey As co-investigator on the ADS All Sky Survey, I performed management and data analysis duties related primarily to the “Old Astronomy” portion of this project, which is the extraction and recovery of image data in published journals. I also provided feature requirements and end user feedback to the developers of the Astronomical Literature Heatmap

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portion of this project. Please see the ADS All Sky Survey portion of my work under the detailed Seamless Astronomy Group section below.

Committees

AAS Committee on Employment I am a member of the AAS Committee on Employment (2012-). My duties have focused upon soliciting and organizing professional development activities for the AAS, especially during the winter AAS meetings. I also evaluate these professional development activities, including the building of, soliciting responses to, and compiling statistics for these evaluations for the last two Winter AAS meetings (AAS 221, AAS 223). Our evaluations consistently show that the AAS community places a great deal of value in these workshops; one of our biggest tasks going forward trying to meet the corresponding need/demand for these workshops. This must happen both by expanding the workshops’ footprint at the meetings, and seeing to it that these workshops reach more local audiences.

I am also heavily involved in the redevelopment of the “Careers” section of the AAS.org website, and collecting and maintaining connections to astronomers outside of academia.

Internal CfA Committees I am a member (2013-) of the Predoc Research Review Committee for Sarah Willis (Iowa State, SAO advisor, H. Smith).

External Non-Astronomy Committees Program Committee for the 2013 Python for Scientific Computing Conference (http://conference.scipy.org/scipy2013).

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Peer Review

I have contributed peer review to both the astronomical and the broader scientific computing communities. My expertise has lead me to being solicited for reviews that lie somewhat outside the realm of astronomy academia, including as a reviewer for scientific conferences and book publishing in the technology sector. I document by year my contributions below:

2009: NASA ROSES ADAP Panel Review; ApJ and ApJL Journal Reviews (2)

2010: NASA ROSES Education & Public Outreach (EPOESS) Panel Review; ApJ Journal Review (1), CFHT Observing Proposal Review

2011: A&A Journal Review (1)

2012: ApJS Journal Review (1); CFHT Observing Proposal Review

2013: AJ Journal Review (1); Reviewed O’Reilly book proposal; Reviewed talk abstracts for 2013 SciPy conference

Conferences and Workshops

A central goal of my work is to create opportunities for astronomers to share knowledge about software tools and to build or test new tools for research. To meet this goal I have organized or contributed to ~20 such workshops both at the CfA and to a broader audience of astronomers. These events ranged from informational “demo”-fests to software workshops to “hack” days, which is when astronomers create new software in an 8-24 hour span of time. Running these workshops frequently involved fund raising and event management. I have run such workshops in collaboration with the Seamless Astronomy group, the AAS Committee for Employment, the US VAO project, and the .Astronomy conference series.

CfA Seamless/Python Workshops I have initiated and organized a series of workshops at the CfA aiming to expose CfA scientists to new and

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otherwise unknown research tools. I have also contributed my skills to the Python4Astronomers tutorial series.

1. CfA Online Astronomy User Group (2010-2011): I organized a monthly “user group” for (10-20) astronomers interested in learning about online technologies for their research. We met in October 2010 and January, February, April and May 2011. This website documents that user group: http://bit.ly/cfaVOUserGroup

2. Expo of Online Astronomy tools (1 December 2010): I organized a CfA-wide exposition of tools from across the institution’s research groups. This Expo is documented here: http://bit.ly/VOExpo2010

3. Python4Astronomers Workshop (Spring 2011): I contributed course materials and lectured on VO software to this CfA-wide seminar series. See: http://python4astronomers.github.io/

4. Seamless “COOL TOOLS for Online Astronomical Research from CfA” 22 November 2011: assisted with organization and running of this 1 hour session. See: http://bit.ly/cooltools11

5. Seamless “Holiday Demofest”, 19 December 2012: Contributed Dataverse and VAO demonstrations; assisted with organization.

6. Seamless Expo Fest, 13 December 2013: Contributed Dataverse Demonstrations; assisted with organization.

CfA Dataverse Workshops The Astronomy Dataverse project is a major project that I have been undertaking to solve the problem of how astronomers can manage, share, and archive the research data they produce. In collaboration with the Wolbach Library, I initiated a series of seminars, workshops, and office hours for the CfA community.

1. Introduction to the Astronomy Dataverse (2 April 2012, Phillips)

2. Dataverse Training (23 October 2012, Wolbach)

3. Drop-in Dataverse Office Hours (9 April 2013, Wolbach)

4. Drop-in Dataverse Office Hours (14 May 2013, Wolbach)

VAO Community Days As part of my VAO position I organized or taught curriculum for a number of VAO Community Days, which are day long professional outreach events to bring localized groups of astronomers up to speed on new VO tools.

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1. Boston 2011: The inaugural “Tools for Data-Intensive Astronomy” VAO Community Day was held at the CfA on 30 November 2011. I organized the workshop, and advertised (by email) this VAO Day to every astronomy department in Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire. I created the curricular materials that can be found here: http://bit.ly/VODayBoston11 (48 attendees).

2. Caltech 2011: I taught curriculum related the VAO Data Discovery Tool at this VAO Community Day, held on 7 December 2011 at the Cahill Building at Caltech. (36 registrants)

3. AAS 219 (Austin, TX): I taught curriculum related the VAO Data Discovery Tool at this VAO Community Day, held on 8 January 2012 at the winter AAS meeting. (51 registrants)

4. Delaware 2012: I organized and ran a workshop on VO technologies for members of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Delaware on 2 October 2012. (10 attendees)

5. Michigan 2012: I taught curriculum related the VAO Data Discovery Tool at this VAO Community Day, held on 14 November 2012 at the University of Michigan. (23 registrants)

Astronomy Professional Development Workshops I have also run professional development events for audiences outside the CfA. These include AAS professional development workshops and astronomy “hack days,” which is a unique way to expose astronomers to new technologies:

1. .Astronomy NYC Hack Day (December 2012) I devised, organized, and orchestrated all aspects of this full day event held in New York City. I solicited and received sponsorship from the Bitly tech company and Seamless Astronomy/Microsoft Research. Some 35 astronomers from across the NYC TriState area came to central Manhattan to share software code, and develop new science oriented projects. See this writeup in Space.com: http://www.space.com/19150-astronomy-hack-day.html or our Hack Day landing page: http://dotastronomy.com/blog/2012/12/hack-day-in-new-york/

2. AAS 223 (January 2014) “Managing, Sharing, and Archiving Your Data” professional development workshop: I organized, created curriculum, and taught this 1/2 day workshop.

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3. AAS 223 (January 2014) “Introduction to Python” professional Development workshop: I organized this all day event as part of my duties to the AAS Committee on Employment.

.Astronomy The .Astronomy (http://dotastronomy.com/) conference series “aims to bring together an international community of astronomy researchers, developers, educators and communicators to showcase and build upon these many web-based projects, from outreach and education to research tools and data analysis.” I participated in this conference series as an attendee for .Astronomy 2 (2009, Leiden), speaker at .Astronomy 4 (2012, Heidelberg), and local organizer for .Astronomy 5 (2013, Cambridge, MA), which brought 65 scientists from across the world to Microsoft Research’s NERD Center during September 2013.1

As lead local organizer for the .Astronomy 5 conference, I worked with SAO Meeting organizer, Jenine Humber, to facilitate all aspects of local conference organization: from hotel and food arrangements, audio/video recording, daily setup/takedown, etc. I further worked with the CfA Science Media Group to create a lasting multimedia archive of the talks given during the meeting. The .Astronomy 5 conference was sponsored by Microsoft Research, who provided meeting space and in kind catering support; Bikeway, who provided local free bike rental passes, and the Seamless Astronomy Group.

Educational and Outreach Activities

In addition to the many professional outreach activities that I describe above, I have contributed educational and public outreach activities through mentoring, and dedicated efforts to develop public outreach products from my research.

Mentorship I directed M. Azimlu (September 2011 - February 2014) as postdoctoral fellow at the CfA. We worked on creating, managing, and analyzing large databases of photometric data on nearby star forming regions. The size and complexity of the source data were beyond the prior experience of Dr. Azimlu, and I hope that working on this project improves her science and

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1 The conference website and archived talks can be found here: http://dotastronomy.com/events/five/

technical capabilities. In addition I directed M. Moellman (Summer 2013 - January 2014) as an undergraduate intern. We worked to expose Mr. Moellman to methods for dealing with large datasets and machine learning algorithms with a focus on the classification of young star SEDs found in large multi-wavelength archives.

WorldWide Telescope Public Outreach In collaboration with the Chandra EPO team (K. Arcand), I applied for and received funds for a public outreach supplement to my main ADAP grant. We proposed to take the multi-wavelength images of star forming regions, which we collected as part of the main grant, and make them publicly accessible using Microsoft Research’s WorldWide Telescope platform. We would create “stacks” of images (sorted by wavelength), process them into the data format that can be read by the Worldwide Telescope (WWT) software, and use these processed stacks to create multimedia “tours” of the data. The WWT software includes a “powerpoint like” tour building tool that can create movie like interactions with the data sets. We have created the image stacks, and converted some of them into WWT viewable versions. We have not yet created the final multimedia public outreach tours that are the goal of the funded work.

Personal Statement

My work sits at the intersection of modern astrophysical research, software development, big science data repositories, and professional development for scientists. Its scope ranges from investigating the practices of data publishing and citation in astronomy to supporting researchers’ use and reuse of the astronomy's extensive digital archives through social user groups, software development, and documentation. Finally, I combine these skills to facilitate my scientific studies of the birth and early evolution of stars in our local Galaxy.

Five years ago I began work on a project conceptualized by Alyssa Goodman called Seamless Astronomy. I transitioned from Harvard College Observatory, where I worked with Microsoft Research affiliated with the Institute for Innovative Computing, to SAO. I was funded internally to perform

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two tasks: 1) support the US VAO project efforts (end user support, software testing, CfA VO activities); 2) find a data archiving solution for astronomers.

Today I am fully engaged in these efforts. I am proud of my contributions to the US VAO Data Discovery tool. I believe Dataverse is a workable solution for aiding astronomer’s to publish their data, although much work on the tool’s interface and interoperability remain. I think my effort in professional development workshops is likely the most intensive of any astronomer today. Yet I also recognize that my decision to work on many aspects of a virtual observatory has led to considerably less time to focus on scientific research.

The AAS Committee on Employment, on whose membership I serve and provide a leadership role, asserts that professional development never ends. I expect in the future I will continue my work in science and astronomy by supporting other astronomers and scientists in their research, software, and data management. US astronomy is at a dawn of huge data surveys (LSST, WFIRST, GAIA, etc.), and I look forward to enabling new science about the formation of stars and planets with these anticipated data. SAO has internal data repository needs that go beyond the role that Astronomy Dataverse serves for individual astronomer’s data publishing. I am keenly interested in working on larger projects that would benefit the SAO, e.g. providing a searchable data repository from which data could be pipelined. I embrace the important work of addressing data management needs in other science domains, as well.

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US Virtual Astronomical Observatory

Summary: As a member of the User Support and Testing Team for the US VAO, I participated in a range of end-user (aka, everyday astronomers) focused activities. These activities included: end user support, testing, and training related to the “Data Discovery Tool,” which is a VO Resource aggregator; creating and maintaining an end-user forum, and other forms of user documentation. I also contributed work related to VAO Data Curation and Publishing, which is summarized in my Dataverse explainer below.

VAO Data Discover Tool

The VAO Data Discovery Tool (DDT)2 is a facet oriented search and retrieval portal for effectively all virtual observatory resources3. Users can issue position

oriented searches against thousands of VO resources, parse or download the results, drill into individual datasets, and inspect or download subsets of results. It is the data browser of all VO resources, nothing else like it exists in

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2 http://vao.stsci.edu/discover

3 All “virtual observatory” resources that expose data according to one of the three main search protocols (Cone Search, Simple Image Access Protocol, Simple Spectral Access Protocol) are searched in the DDT.

the VO infrastructure today, and I am quite proud of my contributions to its development and deployment.

My contributions to the DDT project include:

• Developed tool requirements (2010); Created user stories and use case templates.

• QA&T lead (2010-2011); Focused on end-user testing (2011-2013).

• Ran end user testing at the CfA (4 sessions); collected and submitted numerous feature requests (and bugs) to JIRA ticketing system.

• Debugged user interface and provided detailed feedback to developers.

• VAO Community Day workshop DDT training (multiple in 2011-2012: Boston, Pasadena, AAS 219, Michigan).

• Ran an unconference session at the .Astronomy 4 (July 2012) meeting that led to numerous feature requests submitted to the US VAO JIRA.

• Developed DDT Documentation, including original user guide based on Boston VAO Data curriculum, video tutorial.

US VAO User Forum: astrobabel.com

I developed and maintain the VAO user forum, “astrobabel.com.”4 My development work included identifying requirements and suitable software

platforms. My requirements lead me to create a “Question and Answer” based

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4 http://www.astrobabel.com/

forum using the “Vanilla Forums”5 software on the BluHost hosting service. I also required that the platform serve not only the VAO; it seemed like an unnecessary parsing of the astronomical computing community to create a Q/A forum solely for “VAO software,” much of which did not exist at the time the forum was instantiated. Instead the VAO forum is for all questions related to astronomical computing, and its membership includes not only the VAO team but also large numbers of astropy.org python developers.

Since its inception, I have: solicited membership, alerted interested parties to new questions, received feature requests, maintain backups, and dealt with forum spam. At the time of the writing of this report I am considering porting astrobabel.com to a new platform that would make feature requests and spam membership easier to handle. I also publicized the forum via an AAS 221 poster, “The Virtual Astronomical Observatory Users Forum.”

User Support, Training, and Documentation

In addition to the user support duties related to the DDT and user forum and my many contributions to the VAO Community day workshops, I was responsible or supplied the following additional duties to the VAO User Support team from 2010-2014:

• Collaborated with Dick Shaw on the creation of a documentation plan for the VAO. Wrote a VO User Documentation Manifesto (2010).

• Supported the VAO AAS Booth, AAS 217, 219, 221.

• Support VAO social media (twitter) activities.

CfA VAO activities

In addition to the above VAO oriented activities, I also contributed to the local CfA VAO/VO community:

• Update the CfA VO website; am currently in the middle of an extended effort to develop VO webpages using the CfA’s new Drupal CMS.

• Met with local software groups at the CfA and advertised local “VO” efforts via a VO Expo of online tools held in December 2010.

• Solicited and arranged for CfA VO Talks (2013/2014).

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5 http://vanillaforums.org/

The Seamless Astronomy Group

Summary: I am the manager of the Seamless Astronomy Group6 at the Center for Astrophysics. The Seamless group brings together representatives from astronomical research, computer science, bibliometrics, librarians, etc from across the CfA to share, discuss, and incubate new ideas. The scope of these ideas range from evaluating new tools that may serve research astronomers today (e.g., The Dataverse Network) to proposing for new grants (e.g., the ADS All Sky Survey) to running tool workshops and expositions frequently at the CfA.

As group manager I am engaged in a many faceted effort that includes participating in grant writing, project management, organization and running of workshops for astronomers, software development, etc.

Astronomy Dataverse

My primary work in the Seamless Astronomy Group is to investigate, develop, and advertise a data sharing and archiving solution for CfA scientists. Over the past 5 years, I have worked with members of Harvard’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science, the CfA’s Wolbach Library and other Seamless Group members to move from a needs survey (2010) to a pilot project (2011) to a full fledged data repository (2012). We:

• Conducted a series of data interviews of CfA research groups (10) to determine CfA astronomers’ data archive needs (2010-2011);

• Transcribed and integrated the results of this needs survey into input requirements for a data archiving system. This culminated in the publication of a PLOS One paper, entitled, “Sharing, archiving, and citing data in astronomy” (Pepe et al. 2014, submitted with preprint attached).

• Determine how to use the Dataverse Network for astronomical data, including (2011-2012):

1. How to represent astronomy data, especially FITS data, in the Dataverse;

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6 The Seamless Astronomy Group Homepage: http://projects.iq.harvard.edu/seamlessastronomy

2. Create “metadata templates” appropriate to astronomy;

3. Connect the Dataverse Network to the SAO/NASA ADS system so that individual datasets can be linked to published papers;

4. Organized discussions with Astronomy publishers (specifically the AAS) about how Dataverse can serve as a backend store for data behind papers (meetings held in 5/2012, 1/2013 (AAS 221), 1/2014 (AAS 223) regarding how Dataverse and AAS/IOP journals can interoperate).

• Once we had a dedicated “Astronomy Dataverse Network” (2012-) in place, I, in close collaboration with the Wolbach Library, began to:

1. Work with individual CfA researchers to get their data ingested into the Dataverse system. There are now 23 “Dataverses” (collections) containing 95 datasets and ~1400 files in the Astronomy Dataverse Network.

2. Develop Astronomy Dataverse Training materials7 and conduct Dataverse trainings and office hours (see above).

• I continue to work with the IQSS Dataverse Network developers to:

1. Add Astronomy related features. The Dataverse software (released version 3.6) now parses, indexes, and permits search against key, value pairs in FITS file headers, including FITS table column names.

2. Improve the Dataverse user interface. Our original survey agrees with end user feedback over the past two years that cleaner, simpler and more responsive user interface is critical for the appeal of the Dataverse network to the everyday scientist. I contribute to the development of Dataverse Version 4 to be released Q1 2014.

3. Project new features for Dataverse development. With Arnold Rots I am providing detailed requirements for astronomy specific metadata structures that will allow Dataverse records to be indexed by the virtual observatory.

4. Use my experience building astrobabel.com and in other social media venues to help foster growth in the Dataverse user community. I contribute to a rebuild of the forums for the Dataverse user community.

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7 http://hdl.handle.net/10904/10182

ADS All Sky Survey

The ADS All Sky Survey is a NASA (ROSES2011 ADAP) funded project to reuse the SAO/NASA ADS corpus as a true data source. There are two relevant stages of the ADS All Sky Survey: Literature Heatmaps of the Sky, and Recovery of Old Astronomical Images from published papers (aka, Old Astronomy). I had management and analysis duties for both of these projects.

Literature Heatmaps of the Sky Source based heatmaps of the bibliometric sky were created by Thomas Boch (CDS) in a healpix format. The value in each pixel of these heatmaps corresponded to the number of papers about the sources in that pixel. Alberto Pepe and Chris Beaumont created web based Aladin Lite8 and Worldwide Telescope9 viewers (see screen capture above) of these bibliometric data. I was responsible for:

1. Contributing to heatmap requirements and specifications (2012);

2. Testing and providing feedback on Aladin/WWT interfaces (2013);

3. Interfacing with Microsoft Research to enable ingest of the CDS healpix files (unsuccessful due to licensing restrictions on the HealPix software).

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8 http://www.adsass.org/aladin/

9 http://www.adsass.org/wwt/

4. Work with SAO/NASA ADS to incorporate these spatial heatmaps into their ADS Version 2 search engine (-2014).

Old Astronomy SAO/NASA ADS provided our team with scanned articles representing the astronomy corpus over a ~100 year period. We took those images, processed them with automated astrometry software, and are inserting them back into the scientific literature. My primary work on this project includes:

1. Oversee the astrometry.net solving of Old Astronomy images culled from the ADS Corpus. Work was primarily done by Max Lu and Alberto Pepe using Harvard Odyssey computing facilities;

2. Analyze and integrate the resulting database of solved images, including parsing metadata, writing new file headers, and creating tables of results.

3. Create visualizations of the Old Astronomy results using the World Wide Telescope. The screen capture below is a 1919 image of M16 compared to the Digital Sky Survey in the WorldWide Telescope web client.

4. Work with ADS and AAS/IOP to determine how these images can be reinserted into the published literature.

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