Speaker
Description
Gravitational wave follow-up requires iterative observation, analysis, and decision-making on the order of hours in the most extreme of cases. To this extent, it is a subfield where throughput is defined not only by the amount of pertinent data, but rather the speed at which the information in the data can be synthesized into a human-digestible format. In this talk I will present the follow-up effort of the Gravitational Wave-MultiMessenger Astronomy DECam Survey team (PIs Andreoni+Palmese) during the fourth LIGO/Virgo/KAGRA observing run through the lens of considering the technological infrastructure required to perform effective GW follow-up. I propose that maximizing scientific yield of follow-up efforts relies on maintaining a human-centric perspective on pipeline development in which the aggregation and presentation of big data products are just as important as the analytical methods producing said products.