Science Blog from SDSS III: The spotlight this month is on Jonathan Bird, the Vanderbilt Initiative for Data-Intensive Astrophysics Postdoc (VIDA) at Vanderbilt University. He is also the APOGEE-2 Science co-chair, for which he is responsible of “making sure that APOGEE-2 takes full advantage of the truly ground-breaking dataset the survey has produced.” Jonathan is fascinated by the structure of the Milky Way Galaxy: Why is it shaped this way? What was it like in the past? And what will it be like in the future? Like many people, Jonathan developed a love for astronomy from an early age. His family home in the Santa Monica mountains offered beautiful views of the night sky. But growing up, his real passion was basketball. He travelled extensively across the west and southwest for tournaments in high school, and was lucky enough to play college ‘ball when he arrived at Caltech — a team in need of little introduction. Jonathan’s scientific interests have been widespread. Studying radio waves to investigate what determines the large-scale morphology of galaxies; using Cepheid variable stars to measure distances to galaxies; studying Asymptotic Giant Branch stars in order to understand their contribution to stellar synthesis models, a major component of galaxy models; and ...