News and Activities

Richard F. Caris, a friend and enthusiastic supporter of the LSST project, died on August 9th at his home in Scottsdale, Arizona. He was 81.

Richard’s $2.3 million gift to the LSST Corporation marked the first philanthropic support of the novel 8.4-meter diameter primary and tertiary (M1M3) mirror for the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) and enabled the purchase of the special high purity glass. The M1M3 mirror is now complete.

Richard was attracted to the LSST because of its engineering and scientific novelty. He saw his support as enabling a New Sky for the next generation of curious minds.


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1-5 August 2016; Chicago, IL

22-23 July 2016; Oxford, UK

18-22 July 2016 at Oxford University; Two DESC meetings in 2017

Summer 2016; Stanford University

20-24 June 2016 in Belgrade, Serbia

12-16 June 2016 at the AAS 228 Meeting in San Diego, CA

6-10 June 2016, Carnegie Mellon University

22-25 May 2016, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Stony Brook University

Through a generous matching grant from Charles Simonyi and Bill Gates, the LSSTC is able to invest in a new science research initiative called Enabling Science. The initiative will help advance the science of cosmology, astronomy, and physics in support of the LSST project and its accompanying big data.

As a recipient of an LSSTC grant in 2015, CIERA/Northwestern's LSSTC Data Science Fellowship Program (DSFP) wll enhance a traditional astrophysics curriculum--extending a strong physics education to one that encompasses computational techniques, programming skills, data management, statistics, and data analysis.