Professional Profile

My professional work spans a wide range of endeavors: astronomical research on the late stages of stellar evolution, the astrophysics of gaseous nebulae, and related sub-fields. I have a strong interest in creating and leveraging large astronomical data sets to publish new scientific discoveries. I also have wide-ranging technical interests, and have participated in the design and construction of major data systems, archives, and analysis software in support of astronomy. I have extensive experience in supporting a diverse user base to execute complex observing programs on facility-class Earth- and space-based instrumentation. I have also managed a diverse and geographically distributed software development team, and have served on various advisory panels and committees for science data archives, software systems, instrument support, and telescope time allocation.

The following is a concise summary of my professional experience, skills, and interests; check out the rest of this website for more details.

Experience

Group manager, NOAO/Data Products Program

  • Managed a cross-disciplinary and geographically distributed staff that grew from 6 to more than 15 engineers and scientists, plus in-kind staff from partner institutions.
  • Developed and tracked an annual budget of $1.7 million.
  • Oversaw the development of NOAO‘s first public archive of science-ready astronomical data.
  • Oversaw the development of NOAO’s first automated pipelines to produce science-ready wide-field images.
  • Developed policies for proprietary data rights, copyright, and conditions of use for community data products.
  • Established MOUs with partner institutions to leverage their experience in pipelines, long-haul data transport, and mass data storage.
  • Developed strategies for metadata management, and bulk data transfer for end-to-end data processing and archive systems.
  • Chaired the organizing committee for the Astronomical Data Analysis Software & Systems conferences, and won sponsorship from research institutions and federal funding agencies.

LSST Design & Development Team

  • Contributed to the design and development of the LSST data management system, including science and technical requirements definition, processing flows, and quality assessments.
  • Contributed to system requirements and analysis.
  • Develped documentation of the demostration data products and processing.
  • Developed presentation materials for federal agency reviews.

Scientist, NOAO

  • Managed the development of an End-to-End data processing and archive system and web portal for the WIYN Observatory WIYN One-Degree Imager.
  • Led a group to test Virtual Observatory tools for data discovery.
  • Developed extensive user-facing documentation for major NOAO instruments and associated data processing pipelines.
  • Developed in-depth user documentation for the Gemini Observatory/GMOS instruments, including python tutorials for reducing data.
  • Conducted research on the late stages of stellar evolution, successfully competed for telescope time on space-based and major ground-based observatories.
  • Authored numerous refereed publications and conference proceedings.
  • Presented invited papers and made numerous contributions to national and international astronomical conferences, and co-authored press releases of research results.
  • Won funding for research programs from NASA, with numerous grants of $20K to $250K.
  • Regular referee for research papers, observatory time allocation committees, and federal funding proposals.
  • Participated in the development of FITS, the international standard for astronomical data serialization.

Scientist, Space Telescope Science Institute

  • Instrument Scientist for the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS), where I carried out calibrations, characterized instrument performance, and constructed calibration reference files.
  • Developed pipeline and analysis software requirements, conducted end-user testing, and verified the scientific fidelity of the processing.
  • Provided user support, and developed user documentation.
  • Wrote pipeline processing and data analysis software, web-based exposure time calculators, and other utilities.
  • Provided end-user support, developed user documentation, and assisted management in planning the evolution of the data processing and analysis software.
  • Gave presentations on analysis software at International conferences.
  • Won multiple NASA grants to construct analysis software for the community.
  • Led a cross-functional team to improve the web presence of Space Telescope Science Institute.
  • Developed scientific analysis software for the analysis of gaseous astrophysical nebulae.

Skills

  • Software Tools: Python (5 yr), Fortran (10 yr), C/C++ (2 yr), IDL (2 yr), SQL/SQLite (2 yr), ML (beginner), HTML (20 yr), XML (4 yr)
  • Authoring Tools: Sphinx (2 yr), MS Office (20 yr), LaTeX (30 yr), Adobe Creative Suite (10 yr)
  • OS: OS X (10 yr), Unix (10 yr), MS Windows/XP (working familiarity)
  • Management: (Most 4–5 yr:) program development, budget development/tracking, policy development, personnel management, technical project planning and management (10 yr), recruiting, soft skills
  • Communication: Proposal writing, editing, oral presentation, technical writing, standards development (all 25 yr+)
  • Software Development: Software engineering; requirements elicitation, development, and analysis; applications and scientific algorithm development; testing, fault diagnosis, process optimization

Research Interests

  • Astrophysics of gaseous nebulae
  • Late stages of stellar evolution
  • Planetary nebulae
  • Magellanic Clouds
  • Atomic & molecular spectroscopy, gas-phase abundances
  • Stellar populations
  • Variable stars
  • Astrophysics with large datasets

Technical Interests

  • Performance characterization & calibration of facility-class UV/Optical/IR instruments
  • Data reduction & analysis software
  • Data Archives
  • End-to-end systems
  • Data standards
  • Metadata engineering
  • Data mining
  • Machine learning