Mario Juric
Speaking Sessions
We're Building the Largest Sky Survey in History: Can AI Help us Understand Its Data?
In this talk I'll describe how modern machine learning and AI connect with the challenges and opportunities of the Rubin Observatory’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). LSST — the largest optical sky survey in history, expected to begin by the end of this year — will produce data at unprecedented rates and volumes. I outline how AI can support it every stage of the data-to-science pipeline: from image calibration and difference imaging, to real-time alert characterization, cross-matching, anomaly detection, and large-scale discovery. I'll highlight applications in time-domain astrophysics and Solar System science, and emphasize the emerging roles of community brokers, foundation models, and domain-informed architectures in transforming raw data streams into reliable classifications and actionable follow-up. My goal is to show how collaboration between astronomers and ML researchers can help turn LSST’s data deluge into genuine scientific insight.
Biography
Prof. Mario Juric is the P.I. of UW's contribution to the construction of the Rubin Observatory, Senior Fellow at UW’s eScience Institute, and the director emeritus of UW's Institute for Data-intensive Astrophysics and Cosmology (DiRAC). Once fully operational in 2026, the Rubin Observatory will deliver the largest sky survey in the history of mankind, answering questions from the nature of Dark Energy to discovering potential “killer” asteroids. Prof. Juric led the definition of Rubin data products and oversees the solar system team.
Prof. Juric received his PhD in astrophysical sciences from Princeton University and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study and a Hubble Fellow at Harvard University. His research is in the area of data-intensive survey astronomy and AI. He developed a range of astronomical software products and techniques, including software for asteroid detection, mapping the Milky Way, novel astronomical databases, and cloud-based astronomical data analysis systems.
Prof. Juric discovered what was at the time largest known structure in the Universe (the Sloan Great Wall; with J. Richard Gott), a dwarf galaxy colliding with the Milky Way (the Virgo Overdensity), and over a hundred asteroids (including 22899 Alconrad, the smallest known main-belt binary asteroid; with Korado Korlevic). Jupiter-family comet 183P/Korlevic-Juric is named after him.