Recognizing that most astronomers are never given a proper background in software development and
seeing the resulting frustration as programming is a core component of research today, I created a five
day workshop to address this need. SciCoder has been run annually since 2009 in New York City, is targeted
to early career researchers, and sells out every year. One day workshops are also regularly held at AAS
meetings. 2016 will see the workshop travel to other countries,
including Australia. Please contact me if you are interested in hosting a workshop.
Sloan Digital Sky Survey
I was the plate designer for the Sloan Digital Sky Survey,
arguably the most successful astronomical survey.
In addition to designing every plate since 2008 (thousands!), I have played a central role in designing,
building, and maintaining infrastructure that is critical to SDSS operations. This includes systems used
for nightly observatory operations, design and implementation of the
Science Archive Server (SAS), and the (now defunct, but will return in Trillian) SDSS API.
Stellar Population Synthesis
I have worked on a stellar population synthesis Python library. Initially built as a translation
of Charlie Conroy’s FSPS code, this library is
being built with expandability in mind. Users will be able to easily plug in their own
isochrone library, stellar library, or easily write their own custom initial mass function.
My library is being written with Trillian in mind, to be able to run models agains millions of
galaxy observations at a time.
