Igor Oya

Igor Oya

Dr. Igor Oya, Astrophysicist, Software PM and Architect

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About Me

I am a work-package leader of a software team in the Cherenkov Telescope Array - one of the largest astronomical observatories under construction. I was previously involved in two large astronomical projects, High Energy Stereoscopic System (H.E.S.S.) and the Major Atmospheric Gamma Imaging Cherenkov Telescope (MAGIC). I was born in Bergara, Spain, in 1979. I received my degree and PhD in physics from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM), Spain, in 2004 and 2010, respectively. In 2010 I moved to the Berlin area, where I first worked in the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, and then the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron (DESY) research centre in Zeuthen, Germany. I am the CTAO Array Control and Data Acquisition System work-package leader and architect.

My research interests include gamma-ray astronomy data analysis and interpretation, astronomical instrumentation control software, software architecture, and statistics.

Outside working hours, I like to spend time with my wife, my two kids, and my dog, who are happy to help me with my hobbies such as gardening. I also like to make small electronics and computing experiments (love my Arduino and Raspberry Pi-s), history, literature, and computing.

My curriculum vitae My publication list

Latest Projects

CTA Array Control and Data Acquision System

Designing and prototyping the central software to control the CTA instrumentation

ACTL functional decomposition
UML

The Array Control and Data Acquisition System (ACADA) is the overlaying software developed to control the observatory and run the data acquisition. As manager of the ACADA team, I coordinate a team of researchers and computing experts in CTA. We are modeling the precise architecture of the software system to organize software development in CTA.

Creating software that can control with a high degree of automation, reliability, and precision an array of 100 telescopes is not an easy task. Our software needs to react to scientific alerts - meaning re-position dozens of heavy telescope - in timescales of seconds, while it has to be able to ingest, and online reduce, data volumes of the order of GB/s.

Paper with further details

Telescope Control Design

Designing the generic behavior and software interface to CTA telescopes

ACTL functional decomposition
Prototype

The ACADA system has to interface with the telescopes of different designs. In order to facilitate the integration of the telescope local control into the ACADA system, I have specified a common state machine and control interface that any individual telescope unit should implement.

To define the generic interface and behavior, I first defined a set of generic CTA telescope use cases, followed up by an architecture work using SysML and UML, as well as fast prototyping of the proposed interface code.

Paper with further details

CTA Operator GUI

Our team at DESY is responsible for designing the user interface for the CTA operators. We combine the expertise of gamma-ray astronomers with experts on human-computer interfaces to design the GUIs that will be exposed to control the 100 telescopes of CTA. Our GUI designer Iftach Sadeh is creating a striking set of GUIs based on Web technology, incorporating a Python web server, Web Sockets and graphics generated with the d3.js Javascript library.

Find out more in Iftach Sadeh's homepage

project name

Very High Energy sources in our Galaxy

I used data acquired with the H.E.S.S. array of telescopes to investigate potential sources within our Galaxy emitting gamma-rays. The study of these sources is of paramount importance in order to answer one of the longstanding questions on astroparticle physics field: where do cosmic rays originate? See more details in some of my works in the links below.

Discovery of the Hard Spectrum VHE γ-Ray Source HESS J1641-463

H.E.S.S. reveals a lack of TeV emission from the supernova remnant Puppis A

HESS J1826−130: A Very Hard γ-Ray Spectrum Source in the Galactic Plane

Modelling expert for CTA Software Architecture

I am the modelling expert of the CTA architecture team. We use a UML/SysML approach, in cooperation with experts from the Fraunhofer IESE institute, a world-leading institution on software research. Based on existing project objectives and high-level use cases, we model processes as tailored UML activity diagrams and we decompose the CTA software in systems and sub-systems.

Our collaborators in the Franhuhofer Institute

Other Projects

Medium Size Telescope Prototype Control Software Software Prototyping

The project was about creating a prototype control system based on OPC UA and CORBA technologies. For that, we created Python, C++ and Java applications under the Alma Common Software (ACS) software framework, originally developed to control the 64 antennas of the ALMA interferometer.

Find out more in my paper

Propety Recorder Software Development

The Property Recorder is a Python-based application that Torsten Schmidt (the database expert of our team) and I developed together. Integrated into the ACS based control system, the application is able to automatically discover existing devices and perform a time-series data recording of the hundreds of properties to monitor. The data are stored in a MongoDB nosql database.

View on GitHub

Data quality and automatic analysis framework for the MAGIC telescopes Software Development

I spent a large fraction of my time at the UCM developing and maintaining the data quality and automatic analysis framework for the MAGIC telescopes. The job was to execute a set of processes (shell scripts and cron jobs in a Linux environment) that would generate a set of health and quality indicators designed and maintained from 2004 to 2010.

Find out more in my PhD thesis

Analysis of gamma-ray emission from active galactic nuclei Data Analysis and Interpretation

During my time at the UCM I was very active in the analysis of the emission of gamma-ray from a special type of galactic nuclei, blazars. Blazars are among the most energetic known phenomena in the Universe, which can also exhibit huge emission variability from year to minutes timescales. I and my collaborators studied three blazars, Markarian (Mkn) 421, Mkn 501, and 1ES 1426+428, which are among the most interesting targets for gorund-based gamma-ray instruments.

Our work on "MAGIC TeV gamma-ray observations of Markarian 421 during multiwavelength campaigns in 2006"

Our work on "Simultaneous Multiwavelength Observations of Markarian 421 During Outburst"

Find out more in my PhD thesis

Study of cosmic-ray origin Scientific result

We searched, and were not able to find to confirm, previously suggested correlations between cosmic ray events as measured by the Pierre Auger observatory and the potential acceleration places in the nuclei of nearby galaxies using Fermi-LAT data.

View our work here

Observation with ATCA radiotelescope Array Observations Setup

Me and my collaborators proposed some observations in the ATCA array of radiotelescopes in Australia. The observations target the pulsar wind nebula HESS J1303-631, a region we had estudied ourselves before but in the very-high-energy gamma-ray energies. We performed the analysis and we are about to publish the results.

Check our results in this pre-print

Using machine-learning techniques to classify Fermi sources Data Analysis

We explored the parameters of the Fermi Large Area telescope using machine learning techniques (support vector machines and random forest) to classify the sources of unknown origin contained there.

View our work here

Work Experience

Software Work Package Coordinator - CTAO gGmbH, Zeuthen, Germany (2018 - Present)

I am the coordinator of the CTA Array Control and Data Acquisition Work Package. I manage the team composed of about 30 developers from 8 institutions contributing to the ACADA software.

Researcher assistant and Project Manager - DESY, Zeuthen (2014 - 2018)

During my work at DESY, I coordinated activities for the "Array Control and Data Acquisition (ACTL)" software work package within the CTA project. These coordination activities are split into two: those related to the local personnel and companies hired by DESY, and those activities at CTA level involving collaborators from other institutes. I employed 20% of my time to analyze sources of very high energy gamma-ray with the High Energy Stereoscopic System H.E.S.S array data.

Researcher assistant and software developer - Physics Department, Humboldt University, Berlin (2010 - 2014)

My main software tasks were to develop control software in the Java and Python programming languages for the CTA project, and prototyping of those designs by using the CTA telescope prototype located in Berlin. My research activities involved investigating Galactic gamma-ray sources and their counterparts in other energies (X-rays, radio). I also performed a 1-month observation shift at the H.E.S.S. site in Namibia.

PhD Student – Researcher- GAE team at Universidad Complutense, Madrid (2004 - 2010)

In this position, I studied active galactic nuclei as seen with the MAGIC telescope. Development and maintenance of software routines for both the MAGIC data quality check and onsite analysis. I performed four 1-month operations shifts on the MAGIC site in the astronomical observatory in La Palma, Canary Islands. Teacher of "Physics Lab" and "Statistics" at the University.