Leadership
Rubin Observatory is the result of the collective efforts of thousands of people from around the world. Meet our leadership below!
Zeljko Ivezic
Director of Rubin Construction
Professor of Astronomy, University of Washington
Zeljko Ivezic has been Director of Rubin Construction since 2021. Before that, he served as Deputy Director of Rubin Construction, in addition to his role as Project Scientist. Since the inception of the project in the early 2000s, Zeljko has taken primary responsibility for ensuring that the design and construction of the Rubin Observatory system will be optimized for its scientific mission. Zeljko’s life-long love of astronomy started in elementary school when he joined the school astronomy club and the public Zagreb Observatory astronomy group, and he still enjoys working with amateur astronomers and astronomy teachers.
Sandrine Thomas
Deputy Director of Rubin Observatory Construction (NSF)
Rubin Observatory Telescope and Site Project Scientist
Sandrine Thomas has been Telescope and Site Project Scientist for Rubin Observatory since April 2015. In January 2022 she also assumed the role of Deputy Director of Rubin Construction (NSF). Her past experience has gravitated around adaptive optics and planets detection instrumentation, both from space (UARC/NASA Ames Research Center), the ground (Gemini Planet Imager for Gemini Observatory) and the Laboratory for Adaptive Optics. At Rubin Observatory, Sandrine also serves as a Workplace Culture Advocate, introducing and supporting initiatives that improve Rubin’s workplace culture and foster a respectful and inclusive environment.
Aaron Roodman
Deputy Director of Rubin Construction for SLAC
LSST Camera Program Lead
Aaron Roodman was appointed Deputy Director of Rubin Construction for SLAC in January 2022, after serving as the Rubin Observatory LSST Camera Integration & Test Scientist for 10 years. Aaron Roodman is a professor and chair of the Particle Physics & Astrophysics department at Stanford’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. Trained in experimental particle physics, he spent two decades studying differences between Matter and antiMatter, before turning his research to astrophysics and cosmology.
Victor Krabbendam
Project Manager for Rubin Construction
Victor Krabbendam has been Project Manager for Rubin Construction since 2012, after eight years as Project Manager for the Rubin Observatory Telescope & Site subsystem. Trained as a mechanical engineer, Victor has worked in industry, government, and with major astronomical research facilities including the Hobby-Eberly Telescope at McDonald Observatory and the Southern Astrophysical Research (SOAR) Telescope, a 4.1 meter telescope that is Rubin Observatory’s neighbor on Cerro Pachón.
Bob Blum
Director of Rubin Observatory Operations
Bob Blum became Acting Director for Rubin Observatory Operations in October 2018 after 21 years at the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, where he was Deputy Director for 10 years. Bob's research interest is large survey science with a focus on studies of the Milky Way and the Local Volume. Prior to his role as Deputy Director, Bob spent 10 years at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile as a staff astronomer.
Phil Marshall
Deputy Director of Rubin Operations for SLAC
Senior Staff Scientist, SLAC
As Deputy Director of Operations for SLAC, Phil Marshall focuses on how to successfully deliver the data products needed to do science with Rubin Observatory and the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). He helped form the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC) at its inaugural meeting in 2012, and has held leadership positions in it ever since. His long-running scientific interest is strong gravitational lenses, whose Einstein rings and time delays can be used to probe the accelerated expansion history of the Universe, and the nature of dark matter.
