“The observatory had a lot of mystique and we were all more than proud to work here”

Mar 15, 2023 | News | 1 comment

Tags: ALMA

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For Liza, there was no better destination. Her passion for processing data and obtaining wonderful images of objects in the Universe made our observatory the ideal place to work.

It was February 2012, and Liza Videla, our Science Archive Content Manager had just arrived at ALMA, albeit under very different conditions than she is now.

“All my work was done ‘by hand’, with very little experience regarding the type of data ALMA generated, all of us learning from each result. The observatory had a lot of mystique and we were all more than proud to work here,” says Liza.

At the beginning, only Jorge García was part of her team. Later, José Gallardo joined, and little by little, they began to take charge of data processing. “We started to support the development of the automatic processing of the data, learning every day from all the new and mind-blowing things that came into our hands,” recalls Liza.

Since then, many milestones at the observatory have been etched in Liza’s memory: the first images of protoplanetary disks, with dreamlike angular resolutions, when in 2014 the automatic processing software, “pipeline”, started to be used in regular operations.

And she also recalls situations of adversity, such as when our processing cluster was stopped for three months, generating an almost unmanageable accumulation of data to be reviewed, causing a change in the way Liza and her team work.

All in all, there have been many changes at ALMA over the last decade: “We have added so many incredible things. A huge flexibility for astronomers to observe the Universe, plus so many automated processes, despite the doubts and the challenge of implementing them,” reflects Liza.

Since October last year, she took over as interim Manager of the Data Management Group (DMG). A team of nine people in charge of processing all the data observed by ALMA before sending it to the world astronomical community.

“I’ve changed a lot too, because I’ve interacted with so many people from so many different cultures and customs. Also, by deepening my astronomical knowledge, dabbling in software development, and now from a much more managerial position,” concludes Liza.

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