My research interests are fairly broad, so I'll start by outlining a few of the projects past/present/future that receive most of my attention (along with some relevant papers):

1) Strong lensing selected galaxy cluster samples, and empirical tests of biases inherent in the strong lensing selection (papers: Bayliss+2014a | Blanchard, Bayliss+2013 | Bayliss+2011b).

2) Giant arc statistics - using the incidence of strong lensing as a reality check on structure formation theory and cosmology (papers: Bayliss+2014, in prep | Bayliss2012 | Bayliss+2011a ).

3) Astrophysics of galaxy clusters and the nature of clusters at high redshift (papers: Bayliss+2014c | McDonald, Bayliss+2012 | Stalder+2013).

4) Properties of highly magnified, gravitationally lensed galaxies (papers: Bayliss+2015b | Bayliss+2014b | Rigby,Bayliss+2014 | Dahle+2013 | Gladders+2013 | Sharon+2012 | Wuyts+2012 | Bayliss+2010 | Koester+2010 | Wuyts+2010).

5) Strong Lensing characterization of the Hubble Space Telescope Frontier Fields (papers: Bayliss+2015a Johnson+2014 )

6) Testing the Mass-Concentration relation with strong lensing galaxy clusters (papers: Oguri, Bayliss+2012 | Gralla+2012 | Oguri+2009).

7) Cosmology with galaxy clusters, including mass observable proxies, and the systemmatic impact of the astrophysics of galaxy clusters on cluster cosmolgical experiments (papers: Ruel+14 | Reichardt+2013 | Benson+2013) | High+2012.

8) Millimeter observations of the Magellanic Clouds (courtesy of SPT). This is very much work in-progress, and I welcome anyone with LMC/SMC expertise who is interested in getting involved (just email me).

South Pole Telescope Spectroscopic Follow-up Program

I am the primary (and often sole) person running ongoing NOAO survey program 11A-0038 (PI: Stubbs), which is a program using Gemini/GMOS-South to acquire extensive optical spectroscopy of a large sample of South Pole Telescope galaxy clusters. Observations have been underway since 2011 (to conclude in 2015), and the reduced data products are being released as they become available and are reduced/analyzed. The public data release is handled through the Harvard Dataverse Network (and thank you to the Wolback Library staff for their help and support serving the data!). A journal article describing the program, the reduction data and the methods to generate the data products is in preparation (Bayliss et al., in prep).

Science News/Press Releases

1) I wrote a science highlight summary for the NOAO newsletter (Vol 104). And then another one (front page at NOAO -- woohoo!) on the SPT-GMOS spectroscopic survey of galaxy clusters identified by the South Pole Telescope.

2) I worked with the folks at Gemini Observatory to put out a press release on the "Phoenix Cluster" discovered by the South Pole Telescope, published in Nature (see McDonald, Bayliss+2012 for the science article).

3) The Chicago Tribue interviewed me for an article a few years back about the University of Chicago buying into the Magellan Telescopes (and also the upcoming Giant Magellan Telescope project). So that was kind of fun/interesting.



Lastly, it's fun to close with a cool animation (not mine): the red sequence of RCS-2 galaxy clusters as a function of redshift (Credit: Ben Koester).