The David Will Prize recognizes a student or postdoctoral researcher in astrophysics who is conducting an exceptional research program in computational astronomy, survey astronomy, data science, or other related topics. The award honors the contribution of David Will, who for many years was a beloved member of the department staff, leading the department’s computing and IT efforts. David had a physics background, a generous spirit, was critical to the establishment of ASAS-SN and many other efforts. David was also a dear friend to many people in the department for many years. 

This year the Will Prize is awarded to Wynne Turner recognizing her work developing a sophisticated machine learning tool to predict the quasar continuum in the Lyman alpha forest region.

Heavily quoting from the nomination: Predicting the continuum is critical to any Lyman alpha forest analysis, which is our best way measure the amount and distribution of intergalactic hydrogen. But the problem is tricky because of the complex and widespread nature of the absorption. Wynne’s paper, out this year, opens up a fundamentally new way to analyze LyA forest data for large spectroscopic surveys, especially the DESI collaboration where Wynne works.  

This work has important applications to measure key cosmological parameters including the redshift evolution of the mean optical depth, the power spectrum on large scales, and the mean absorption along each line of sight. Her paper is likely to have a broad impact and form the basis of a number of new Lyman alpha forest projects.  

In addition, this paper and follow up work involves significant computational work with the National Energy Research Supercomputer Center (NERSC) and large datasets (the DESI QSO catalog that now includes about 800k z>2.1 QSOs).  This excellent work using convolutional neural networks, big data, and with a broad impact for a major data set is exactly in the spirit of the David Will Prize and we are happy to award Wynne Turner this award for 2024.