Welcome, Traveler!

I am a post doctoral research associate and astronomy lecturer at Dartmouth College. My work focuses on computational astrophysics, specifically stellar evolution of low-mass / cool stars. I work under Aaron Dotter on the ERC Synergy Grant 4D-STAR. Previously I was a graduate student at Dartmouth where, in 2024, I received my Ph.D. advised by Brian Chaboyer for work on models of low mass stars. Still more previously I was a student at High Point University where, in May 2019, I received a bachelors of science in computational physics. My research focuses on the chemical composition of globular clusters and developing numerical tools to better model stellar evolution in GCs. In my first year at Dartmouth I studied the magnetic fields of M-dwarfs through the rotation-activity relation. At High Point I focused on pulsating hot subdwarf B stars (sdBs) or more specifically finding new pulsating sdBs from archival GALEX data and then getting fed up with that and training neural networks to find pulsating sdBs. Aside from these sdB escapades, I also worked on projects extracting radial velocity measurements from high resolution echelle spectra. 

As much I enjoy astrophysics, I do also enjoy taking breaks from work. In my free time I have been known to work/volunteer at Encore Stage & Studio, where I enjoy carpentry and general theater tech work. Additionally I am of the Star Trek inclinations, spending what some might say is far too much time enthralled in the exploits of the Enterprise crew.

I also run an astronomy themed computer science blog: astrobugs.com aimed at grad students who use computers but might want to explore some advanced features a little more.

Projects

1. Chemically self consistent isochrones for NGC 2808 - in. Prep.

2. The effect of new high temperature radiative opacities on the location of the Jao Gap - Published February 2023

3. Extending the rotation-activity relation to a larger number of m dwarfs - Published April 2022

4. Using Deep Learning to classify and understand data from large sky surveys such as Evreyscope - Published December 2017

5. Searching for pulsating sdBs with GALEX and gPhoton - Published August 2017

Fun Stuff

• Albrook - A Self Hosted Audiobook Streaming Service

• I have tried my hand at writing some science fiction short stories

• HueCastAutoLights — A “Stage Manager” for your Hue Lights

• ZSH_conda — Utilities to better interface anaconda and the Z shell (oh-my-zsh specifically)

• GPUpolytrope — Super fast, GPU based, polytropic solver.

• CUDANbody — simple (overly) and extensible cuda body simulator

Latest Happenings

• Teaching ASTR-(1)74 (Radiative Processes in Astrophysics) in the fall term at Dartmouth College

• Successfully defended my Ph.D. thesis at Dartmouth College.

• Published a paper in ApJ

• Presented a Poster and a Flash Talk at “A Multiwavelength Survey on Globular Clusters Near and Far: from JWST to the ELT”

• Published a paper in ApJ

• Presented a Poster at CoolStars 21

• Successfully proposed a thesis project, now a PhD candidate

• Published a paper in ApJ

• Check out my new blog where I break down computer science topics for astronomers. AstroBugs.com

• Playing with CUDA archived 50x speed up for a proof of concept to speed up DSEP

• Successfully Completed First Year Research Exam.

• Sheltering in place what with “The Current Situation”

• Committed to Dartmouth College’s Graduate school (pursuing a doctorate in astrophysics)

• Poster Presentation on Globular Cluster Work at the 233rd Meeting of the AAS [January 2019]

• Oral Presentation on deep learning work at NCHC as Portz Scholar [November 2018]

• 5 Night Observing Run using 0.9 meter SMARTS telescope at CTIO

• Poster Presentation on deep learning work at HighPURCS [April 2018]

• Awarded Goldwater Scholarship [March 2018]

• Poster Presentation on deep learning work at AAS 231 [January 2018]

• The applications of deep neural networks to sdBV classification Accepted for Publication in Open Astronomy [November 2017]

• Oral presentation on deep learning work at NCAM 2017 [September 2017]

• Oral presentation on deep learning work at sdOB8 [July 2017]

• A search for rapidly pulsating hot subdwarf stars in the GALEX survey Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal [July 2017]

• Poster Presentation on GALEX work at NCAS 2017 [March 2017]

• Poster Presentation on long period sdB+F/G/K binaries at AAS 227 [January 2016]

Maintained Software

• fidanka: A python toolkit for globular cluster science

• mplEasyAnimate: Easy animations with matplotlib

• splitAxes: Simple grid plots with split xaxes

• pyTOPSScrape: Programmatic scrapper for OPLIB opacities.

• Methuselan Thucydides (MT): daily LLM-based paper summarizer.

• ZFSsnapRestore: Command line script to restore files from snapshots

Other Information

Google Scholar