Dr Frank J. Masci – Senior Staff Scientist, Caltech

Frank Masci was born and raised in Melbourne, a port-side city located in Australia's south-east. He received a PhD in Astrophysics from The University of Melbourne in 1997 under the supervision of Professor Rachel Webster. Frank was hired as a post-doc at Caltech in 1998 to support the Wide-field Infra-Red Explorer (WIRE) mission. He then joined the Spitzer Science Center at Caltech in 2000 where he served as Cognizant Scientist for data processing and astrometric calibration. He later became the Deputy Downlink System Engineer. After a brief stint as Assistant Director at the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 2005/2006, he was lured back to Caltech in 2007 to serve as a Cognizant Scientist for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) project. From 2015 to 2021 he was the Science Data System Lead for the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF). Currently, he is System Architect for the Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEOS) Science Data System at Caltech. Frank's professional interests are in astronomical image processing; calibration; methodologies for detecting and characterizing flux variables, transients and asteroids; machine learning, and improving statistical methodologies for astronomical research in general. In his spare time, Frank enjoys skiing, skeet and trap shooting, cooking, playing guitar, writing music, and pondering the intricate patterns of nature. Asteroid (438973) Masci is named in his honor.