Congratulations to Maria Patterson, a UW Astronomy Research Scientist working in the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) Data Management Science Pipelines group. Maria is a runner-up in the “Search for Hidden Figures Contest“, a contest sponsored by PepsiCo and 21st Century Fox, to find the next generation of women who will lead the way in STEM: Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math. From a total of 7,000 applicants, two grand prize winners and 10 runners-up were selected. Maria creatively programmed her winning video (also see embed below) from open source code and open data.
Maria joined the LSST team in August 2016. She worked on characterizing galaxy outer disks for her thesis before completing a postdoc at the University of Chicago’s Center for Data Intensive Science, where she worked on cloud-based pipelines for automated analysis of NASA satellite imagery and architectures for scientific data commons.
Maria currently works with the LSST’s data management group at the University of Washington on the alert production pipeline. The UW group is developing the alert production pipeline, building algorithms and tools for the automated detection of astronomical transient phenomena and subsequent alert distribution to enable fast follow-up observations. Maria is passionate about open science and diversity in computing and is active in several women’s organizations as an editor for AASWomen, an organizer for PyLadies Seattle, and a volunteer for the Anita Borg Institute and its Filipinas in Computing group.