Hi, I’m Lukas Wenzl
Ph.D. student in Astronomy, working on Observational Cosmology
About Me
PHD Candidate
at Cornell University started 2019
Cornell University Graduate Student Fellowship for one year. Graduate Research Assistant Summer 2020 – Now
I am a PhD candidate in the Astronomy Department at Cornell University. I am working on observational cosmology under the supervision of Prof. Rachel Bean. I received my M. S. in 2023 from Cornell University.
B.S in Physics
at Heidelberg University from 2015-2019
Bachelor Thesis and Research Assistant at Max Planck Institute for Astronomy from 2018-2019
Teaching Assistant for Theoretical Physics I during WS 2018/2019
Academic Exchange year at University of Arizona from 2017-2018. Received Baden-Württemberg Scholarship
I hold a B.S. in Physics from Heidelberg University. My bachelor’s thesis was on high redshift quasar searches under the supervision of Dr. Jan-Torge Schindler, Prof. Xiaohui Fan, and Dr. Fabian Walter. The project was a collaboration between the MPIA in Heidelberg and the University of Arizona.
Research
Below you can find recent publications of mine.
For a complete, up-to-date list see ADS
Magnification Bias Estimators for Realistic Surveys: an Application to the BOSS Survey
Wenzl, L. et al. 2023, submitted to MNRAS
Presenting a method to estimate the magnification bias in realistic galaxy surveys and application to SDSS BOSS.
Cosmology with the Roman Space Telescope — Synergies with CMB lensing
Wenzl, L. et al. 2022, MNRAS 512.4, 2022, pp. 5311–5328, doi:10.1093/mnras/stac790
Presenting a forecast for the combined analysis of weak lensing and galaxy clustering data from the Roman Space Telescope and CMB lensing data from the Simons Observatory.
Random Forests as a viable method to select and discover high redshift quasars
Wenzl, L. et al. 2021, AJ, 162, 72 (2021), doi:10.3847/1538-3881/ac0254
Presenting a method to select quasars up to redshift of about 6 using a supervised machine learning algorithm. We report 20 new quasars between redshifts of 4.6 and 5.7.
credits for pictures above: Mag Bias visual: NASA, ESA, and A. Feild (STScI) (modified); Cosmos field: NASA, ESA, and R. Massey; Planck Polarization: ESA and the Planck Collaboration; Roman image: Roman collab; SO image: Galitzkia et al. 2018; Google Earth; Pan-STARRS image: R. White and the PS1 Science Consortium; Quasar illustration: ESO/M. Kornmesser; Roman Space Telescope render: NASA
Code
I am committed to making any code that might be useful to others in the field publically available as soon as I can.
github.com/lukaswenzl/astrometry
A simple python3 tool to correct the astrometry, i.e. the sky position metadata, of FITS images. I wrote the tool from scratch as part of my work as a Research Assistant at the MPIA. The tool has been used for various photometric follow-up observations of quasar candidates.
Random Things
Astronomical Techniques Cheatsheet
How to use the Wold Coordinate System (WCS) in python
Notes on Statistical Mechanics (grad level, mostly a cheat sheet of essential concepts)