Clécio Roque De Bom, professor and researcher at the Brazilian Center for Physical Research (CBPF) in Rio de Janeiro, has been chosen as the spokesperson for the Southern Photometric Local Universe Survey (S-PLUS) collaboration.
The announcement was made during the "XVIII Meeting of the Collaboration", which ran from August 21st to 23rd, 2023 at the National Observatory (ON) and at the Valongo Observatory (OV - UFRJ).
The spokesperson will be responsible for presenting and promoting the S-PLUS and T80S-related projects to the Brazilian community and abroad. He is expected to contribute and promote a broader discussion on novel science cases using the S-PLUS data and prospects for future usage of T80S data, collecting the feedback from the S-PLUS community, together with the PI and the Project Scientist and deputy Project Scientist (PS and DPS). The spokesperson is the main contact person for external collaborations outside Brazil.
"Being the spokesperson is a great responsibility, it is an honor to serve the S-PLUS community, contributing to the promotion of the science we do and, at the same time, to the discussions about the collaboration's future projects," De Bom concluded.
Clécio has been working in S-PLUS since 2018 as a coordinator of the Galaxy Morphology working group. In 2022, he was the main S-PLUS host of the "XVII Annual Meeting of S-PLUS" at CBPF. He also led efforts to construct the galaxy morphology catalog using Deep Learning, covering areas never explored by other data surveys in the southern hemisphere. The results were presented in two papers, (Bom et al. 2021 and Bom et al. 2023), and were the subject of a press release.
Clecio is now leading the use of T80S to conduct observations of transient and multi-messenger events in optical bands, particularly Gravitational Waves. The S-PLUS Transient Extension (STEP) project has already discovered new supernovas, in addition to gathering data on dozens of events.