Kayleigh Excell
University of Wisconsin - Madison
Email: kexcell@wisc.edu
GitHub: https://github.com/kexcell
Status: Current Trainee
- GPU training module
- Software Engineering training module
- FPGA training module (in progress)
Biography and Interests
I am a second year graduate student working in the Observational Cosmology group at University of Wisconsin - Madison.
Project
I am working with the Dark Energy Science (DESC) Collaboration and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) survey at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory to address the computational challenges of the new era of large-scale cosmological surveys. My project will combine wide-area imaging galaxy surveys on the ground– LSST/Rubin– and space– the Euclid telescope– to enhance object classification, particularly star-galaxy separation. This impacts multiple cosmological science cases, such as point-spread function (PSF) characterization for weak gravitational lensing, improved galaxy samples for galaxy clustering, and purer stellar samples for stellar streams and ultra-faint dwarf galaxies. The particular science case to which I look forward to applying this project is the search for ultra-faint dwarf galaxies (UFDs). UFDs occupy the lowest-mass end of dark matter halo and galaxy formation processes and are the most dark matter-dominated galaxies. Therefore, they serve as astrophysical probes of particle dark matter theories.
Recent Accomplishments
- Presentation (February 2026) DESC Collaboration Meeting Dark Matter Parallel Session: slides
- Presentation (September 2025) DESC Dark Matter Working Group Meeting: slides 1, slides 2
Mentors
- Keith Bechtol (University of Wisconsin-Madison, advisor)
- Alex Drlica-Wagner (Fermilab)