Our HLIS PIT team completed yet another successful face-to-face (F2F) meeting throughout March 9-13th, 2026, hosted by our excellent members and collaborators at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. This meeting was more than the usual HLIS PIT F2F meeting; in addition to our own PIT members, several members of the Roman Supernova (SN) PIT  also attended, participated, and gave presentations at the meeting. Throughout the week, HLIS and SN PIT members presented lectures, engaged in discussions, shared resources, and connected ideas. Some highlights from the science-focused week are highlighted below. 

The SN PIT representatives included co-PIs Rebekah Hounsell and Dan Scolnic, along with Co-I and early career scientist Lauren Aldoroty. Dan Scolnic and Michael Troxel of the HLIS PIT, both Duke locals, welcomed everyone to the meeting with an introductory plenary session. Later on, Rebekah Hounsell collaborated with HLIS PIT deputy PI and pipeline manager Dida Markovic on an informative session exploring synergies between the HLIS and SN PITs. We are grateful to the SN PIT members who attended the meeting for all their participation, insight, and discussions.

Group photos at the March 2026 PIT F2F meeting outside the Duke Chapel!
 

Throughout the week, HLIS PIT members presented plenary lectures and led parallel sessions exploring key topics for the PIT. These sessions were highly productive, and many resulted in direct new projects or ideas for further exploration. Several of the parallel sessions were led by our Junior Members of the PIT (JuMP):

• Rafael Charles Gomes and Megan Zhao, “CPIP higher order statistics”
• Jiachuan Xu and Rafael Charles Gomes, “CPIP Data Challenge 2”
• Yije Zhu and Jiachuan Xu, “CPIP and Intrinsic Alignments”
• Diogo Souza, Boyan Yin, and Niko Sarcevic, “SCM-CPIP galaxy catalogs to cosmology”
• Chun-Hao To, “SCM & Survey: Validation tests”
• Nihar Dalal, Jiachuan Xu, and Kunhao Zhong, “CPIP: Baryons”
• Boyan Yin, Chun-Hao To, and Diogo Souza, “Roman SOM-PZ”
• Yijie Zhu, “CPIP Emulators”
• Chun-Hao To and Tae-hyeon Shin, “SCM photometry pipeline”
• Kaili Cao, “CPIP Field Level Inference”
• Katherine Laliotis, “Career and Cosmology Q&A Panel” featuring Federico Berlfein, Niko Sarcevic, Ami Choi, and Michael Troxel

    In addition to the plenary and parallel sessions, Monday and Thursday’s schedules included JuMP lightning talks: 3-minute presentations of ongoing research from junior members in our PIT. Talks included:

• Yufei Zhen, “Photo-z Calibration for Roman with Self-Organizing Maps”
• Yoki Salcedo Hernandez, “Clustering-based Redshift Calibration for Roman Cosmology”
• Kaili Cao, “Foreseeable Future: Fast IMCOM and Field-Level Inference”
• Boyan Yin, “DES Y6 all scales blue galaxy reanalysis: sample selection”
• Charlie Mpetha, “Validating the dynamical state of galaxy clusters with lensing”
• Anthony Harbo Torres, “Progress on High Atomic Z Astrophysical Radiation Dynamics (hazard) - A particle simulator for space-based IR detectors”
• Tae-hyeon Shin, “Combining Rubin and Roman photometry and its Implication on Photometric Redshift Estimation”
• Junzhou Zhang, “Code Comparison and Systematics Study”
• Raul Teixeira, “How do survey observing conditions impact intrinsic alignment measurement?”
   

These talks were highly engaging, inspiring questions and discussions afterwards. For interested PIT members, lightning talks slides can be found via the F2F meeting webpage. Thanks to all the presenters for sharing your work with us!

    Outside of the science schedule, PIT members enjoyed a great team dinner at the Washington Duke Inn, organized by the LOC. The PIT PI Olivier Dore gave a great speech recognizing the work of all PIT members towards preparing for Roman cosmology, thanking everyone for their contributions, and sharing excitement about the upcoming Roman launch. JuMP members also participated in a social event encouraging connection amongst the team. Finally, many members of the PIT stayed for a “hack day” on Friday, March 13th and worked together to make progress on the image processing, CPIP tools, and more. The Shape and Color Measurement Working Group (WG) focused on PSF measurement with Piff and cluster-finding with RedMapper (special thanks to Dhayaa Anbajagane and Mike Jarvis for these sessions!). The Cosmological Parameter Inference Pipeline WG hacked on essential pipeline elements of the cosmological inference infrasturcture.  

Selfie of the SCM group working on the PSF hack at PIT F2F on March 13th 2026.

Thanks to the LOC/SOC members (Troxel, Soozy Tierney, Axel Guinot, Katherine Laliotis, Rachel Mandelbaum, Vivian Miranda, and Chun-Hao To) for putting on such a great meeting. We look forward to reconvening everyone again in Florida this fall for the Roman launch!