From cluster mass calibration to cluster cosmology

Clusters are an essential part of the Cosmologist's tool box. The Dark Energy Survey has
produced the best ever cluster catalogue for cosmology. This catalogue is finally ready for
scientific exploitation. The student will play a key role in that exploitation, by using X-ray
and weak lensing techniques to constrain cluster masses (an essential part of the
cosmology pipeline). The project is data intensive in every aspect: from the billions of
galaxies that make up the cluster catalogue (each galaxy having 20+ data parameters), to
the complexities of the analysis of noisy, time varying, X-ray spectra. Machine learning will
be an integral part of the project, because we need to remove as much of the "human" as
possible to ensure we do not prejudice our results. In the later years of the project, the
student will naturally transition from the interpretation of data from the Dark Energy Survey
into the simulation of Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) data and thus into the
forecasting of LSST cluster science outcomes.