Scialog: Early Science with the LSST Funds 7 New Team Projects  

Research Corporation for Science Advancement, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the  Leinweber Foundation, and independent philanthropist Kevin Wells are awarding $1,254,000 total to support the research of seven collaborative teams of scientists from colleges, universities, and research institutions in the United States, Canada, and Chile in the second year of  Scialog: Early Science with the LSST, a three-year initiative to ignite discovery with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time.  

The 19 individual awards are $60,000 in direct costs. 

Scialog is short for “science + dialog.” Created in 2010 by RCSA, Scialog initiatives aim to accelerate breakthroughs by building a creative network of scientists that crosses disciplinary silos, and by stimulating intensive conversation around a scientific theme of global importance. The 2025 Scialog LSST conference, held November 14-17 in Tucson, Arizona, included more than 50 astronomers, cosmologists, theoretical physicists and astrophysicists, computational modelers, data scientists, and software engineers from the U.S., Canada, and Chile.    

RCSA’s Vice President & CFO Danny Gasch, who joined RCSA in 2001 as the foundation was taking its first steps to provide early financial and business support to launch the planning, design and construction of the telescope known at the time as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, told conference attendees this Scialog initiative has special meaning for RCSA.   

“At Scialog we encourage all of you to think big and propose high-risk ideas that wouldn’t get funded anywhere else,” he said. “The LSST is an example where RCSA as a foundation did something similar 25 years ago.”   

“There’s no greater thrill for a foundation, especially a relatively small one like Research Corporation, to make a bet on something like the LSST and see it turn into a world-class scientific instrument like the Vera Rubin telescope,” he said. “To participate in the birth of a new ground-based telescope, and even better, to be able to watch talented scientists like all of you make use of the output, is like winning the World Series.”   

Bob Blum, Rubin Observatory’s Director of Operations, provided an update on the newly commissioned telescope as it transitions from its construction phase to operations. Optimization efforts are ongoing, with the LSST survey beginning in late 2025 and the first data preview scheduled for July 2026.  

He said his team overcame significant technical and environmental hurdles in 2025, delayed by particularly rough winter weather in Chile, but ongoing projects to install more instruments, finish environmental control systems, and fine-tune software and procedures to ensure consistent, high-quality images every night are making considerable progress. 

“It hasn’t happened overnight but over decades, and now it’s all coming together,” he said. 

 ”I can’t wait to be here next year when you’re chewing on the first chunk of the LSSTCam data. The data that we took through the final phases of commissioning is already in the can, so we’re getting ready right now, deliberately setting that schedule for producing the data preview.”   

Enrico Ramirez-Ruiz, University of California, Santa Cruz, set the stage for discussions with his keynote talk, “The Calm Before the Boom: Astrophysical Transients and Stellar Stories with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.”   

He said the LSST data will fundamentally transform our understanding of astrophysics, especially transient events, time-domain astronomy, pre-explosive images of massive stars, and the census of compact objects and binaries.  

“This data will present a vast array of really interesting questions,” he said. “I’ve addressed a few of the topics, but one of the benefits of having you all here at Scialog is that there’s a lot of incredibly important ideas missing, and together you can really catalyze the use of this incredible machine.”   

Throughout the conference, Fellows met in small and medium breakout groups to foster new collaborations, identify bottlenecks, and brainstorm cross-disciplinary research opportunities. They explored how to combine approaches, leverage diverse methods, and tackle novel problems together.   

Along with Ramirez-Ruiz an expert group of scientists served as Facilitators to guide discussions at the conference. They included: Fred Adams, University of Michigan; Eric Bellm, University of Washington; Rebecca Bernstein, Carnegie Science; Lars Bildsten, Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics; Jackie Faherty, American Museum of Natural History; Xiaohui Fan, University of Arizona; David Hogg, New York University: Jeno Sokoloski, Columbia University and LSST Discovery Alliance; and Beth Willman, LSST Discovery Alliance.   

The conference also featured updates from collaborative teams funded in the first year of the initiative who are pursuing out-of-the-box science projects while building the tools to enable robust, real-time discovery and characterization of astrophysical phenomena on an unprecedented scale. 

One team has created new models for brown dwarf evolution and is preparing to apply these frameworks to incoming LSST data. Another team has developed pipelines and infrastructure for detecting, classifying, and following up energetic explosions and transients using multi-wavelength observatories, preparing for synchronized operations with LSST. Another team has employed machine learning to classify high-redshift, super-luminous supernovae and investigated the metallicity-dependent environments in which these brilliant explosions occur, while preparing proposals and frameworks for future spectroscopic follow-up. 

Scialog LSST Fellow Igor Andreoni, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, is co-Chair of the Rubin Transients and Variable Stars Scientific Collaboration, which is working to maximize the potential of LSST in the exploration of the variable and transient sky. Andreoni presented an informative session about the LSST survey strategy and how it is being developed with input from the scientific community.   

He said the main survey includes a wide, fast, deep survey of approximately 18,000 square degrees of the southern sky, with a focus on the time domain due to Rubin’s repeat observations. To address concerns about gaps in cadence, a “rolling cadence” strategy has also been developed to alternate high- and low-cadence stripes in declination.   

He also described how data from the survey will be made available.  

For one, the Rubin Science Platform is a user-friendly portal that will allow users to mine data directly from the cloud, accessing catalogs, images, and tutorials in the form of  Jupyter Notebooks.   

Beyond that, alerts in the Rubin Observatory system will be generated automatically whenever a change in luminosity is detected by the data processing pipelines. These alerts will be made public and distributed to the community through seven designated brokers. The alerts will be accompanied by access to processed images and catalogs after an embargo period, allowing scientists and the broader community to quickly follow up on interesting or unusual transient events, such as supernovae or variable stars.   

On the final morning of the conference, teams pitched 24 collaborative proposals they developed during the previous three days.   

The final meeting of Scialog: Early Science with the LSST will be held November 12-15, 2026.   

The following teams will receive 2025 Scialog Collaborative Innovation Awards: