Hello, I'm Dra Mariana Vargas-Magaña! I live and work in Mexico City, where the legendary Tenochtitlan was founded by the Mexicas. Maybe you've heard about the Aztec Sun Stone, which is on display at the National Museum of Anthropology in the city.
I'm a junior faculty member at the Instituto de Física of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. I co-lead the Observational Cosmology group IF-ICF with Sebastien Fromenteau and our enthusiastic students!
My interests span observational cosmology generally, but in particular I have been working with spectroscopic surveys since my PhD (not so long ago!). I grew 'academically' with the Sloan Digital Sky Survey collaboration, most recently with eBOSS, and I'm a core member of SDSS-V. I'm enthusiastic in promoting inclusiviness in science and I'm a long-term member of the Committee On INclusion in SDSS (COINS). If you have any questions about what you can do to someday take part in these huge collaborations, or you have concerns about under represented groups in Astronomy, please do not hesitate to contact me. I will be happy to tell you of my experiences and give you the best advice!
Now with the Dark Energy Spectrocopic Instrument, I am involved mostly in the clustering and cosmological simulations working groups, co-leading the 'Mock challenge' team. Our goal is to prepare mock Universes and design validation tests for the DESI analysis. This will be used by the main DESI science team for studying Dark Energy with Baryon Acoustic Oscillations and Redshift-Space Distortions. Here I am touring the great Mayall during a fantastic trip to Kitt Peak for my Mayall z-band Legacy Survey (MzLS) observing run. This can be you some day!