Catalyst Fellowship FAQs

Although some flexibility might exist for fellows who need to be away from their host institution for part of their fellowship term, it is expected that fellows will be physically present in the town or city of their chosen host institution. For planning modest amounts of time away from your host institution, please make arrangements with your local advisor.

LSST-DA requires that host institutions provide Catalyst Fellows with benefits that are commensurate with those of other postdocs at that institution. We ask that these benefits include health insurance and paid time off. Where possible, it may include disability insurance, contribution to a retirement plan, and parental leave. It is, therefore, possible that benefits will differ slightly from host institution to host institution, and applicants might want to take these differences into account when selecting their host institution.

This year, LSST-DA expects to award two Catalyst Fellowships in social science and six in astrophysics. Catalyst Fellowships are not renewable. There will not be a new Catalyst Fellowship cohort in 2024. We are aiming to have our next cohort begin in 2025, with applications due in Fall 2024.

In addition to their local advisor, each Catalyst Fellow will put together a mentoring committee. For astrophysics fellows, this committee will include one Science Collaboration (SC) Mentor and one Expansion Mentor. SC Mentors are astronomers or physicists beyond the postdoc stage of their careers who are particularly active within at least one of the eight recognized LSST SCs and who can therefore help the fellow learn how to participate in and benefit from these SCs. 

Expansion Mentors are researchers beyond the postdoc stage of their careers who either conduct LSST-related research in a non-traditional environment such as a small department/college/institute, a Hispanic Serving Institute (HSI), a Historically Black College or University (HBCU), or they are a member of an ethnic group that is underrepresented in astrophysics. For social science fellows, their mentoring committees will include astrophysicists and at least one social scientist other than their local advisor.

No. 

For standard Catalyst Fellowships, you can only work with an LSST-DA member institution as a host.

If you are interested in a four-year expansion-site Catalyst Fellowship, you can either select an expansion site or contact Jeno Sokoloski to discuss whether your host institution of interest is an appropriate expansion site. Expansion sites are typically institutions that have five or fewer astronomy faculty, are under-resourced, or historically minority-serving (MSIs).

Moving partway through may be possible if the site to which you desire to move is also an eligible host institution. 

Yes. Each Catalyst Fellow has one local advisor, who is a faculty or senior researcher at their host institution, as well as several other mentors that together form the fellow’s mentoring committee.

In both astrophysics and the social sciences, applications that have only a weak connection to LSST are unlikely to be successful. Successful applicants are likely to plan to use LSST data, use pre-cursor data, or conduct research that has a strong connection to LSST and/or the LSST community.

Like the astrophysics fellows, Catalyst fellows in the social sciences will have complete academic freedom. So, there is no specific set of research questions for social scientists to investigate. That said, research proposals that have a strong connection to the Rubin LSST science community and /or the way Rubin LSST research is conducted are likely to rank more highly than those that only describe a weak connection to Rubin LSST. 

We hope and expect that Catalyst Fellows in astrophysics who sit at LINCC Hub institutions will take advantage of their host institution’s leadership in LINCC and get significantly involved in LINCC in some way. This involvement, however, does not necessarily need to come in the form of software development. The LINCC fellow could help design or run LINCC programs, for example. If you are interested in listing CMU (PI: Rachel Mandelbaum), Northwestern (PI: Vicky Kalogera), or UW (PI: Andy Connolly) as your host institution, we strongly encourage you to contact the LINCC PI at that institution to discuss your plans for contributing to and benefitting from, LINCC. You could also work with your proposed local advisor to come up with a goal or outcome for the extra year.

Yes.

Some of our top-ranked applicants in the first two cohorts had just completed or were just completing graduate school.

You can view the timeline on the Rubin Observatory website.  

Applicants for Catalyst Fellowships in the social sciences may apply to sit at any LSST-DA member institution. Given the wide range of disciples and methods in the social sciences, applicants are responsible for identifying a local advisor at their desired host institution. The proposed local advisor can be any faculty or senior researcher (beyond the postdoc stage of their career) at an LSST-DA member institution. The local advisor should not be a member of the Catalyst senior social science team.

For astrophysics applicants, there are no explicitly preferred topics or projects. We aim for the research of Catalyst Fellows to cover a balanced and wide-ranging set of LSST science topics.

Either is fine, and the decision is up to the prospective applicant.

Yes, it should be no larger than 10 MB.

The official eligibility date is the date that you were officially awarded your PhD according to the granting institution. In this case, that would be March.

Tuition is not an allowable expense for any LSST-DA award.