Current Projects

SALVATION (Spectroscopic Analysis of Luminous Variables And Transients In Our Neighbors)

The SALVATION Team conducts multi-epoch spectroscopic monitoring of bright variable sources and spectroscopic follow-up of transients in our neighboring Andromeda galaxy (M31) and other nearby galaxies. We use ANTARES to harvest our targets from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) alert stream of time-domain events.

PULSATION (Progressing our Understanding of Luminous Stars And Transients In Our Neighbor)

Together with my postdoc and several students, I am making use of an unintended fortuitous time-domain aspect of the HST’s PHAT survey to find variable sources in its archival data. We focus on characterizing the properties of two classes of variable stars: the faintest stars, in order to probe the limits of our knowledge and set expectations for upcoming surveys with increased sensitivity (e.g., Rubin/LSST and Roman), and stars in crowded cluster regions, in order to probe the influence of a star’s environment on its time-domain properties.

GOATS (Gemini Observation and Analysis of Targets System)

I am leading the development of a one-stop-shop for time-domain astronomy at Gemini. This system will provide a single, easy-to-use interface to allow target selection with ANTARES, observation triggering with Gemini, data access through the Gemini archive, and interactive data reduction via DRAGONS, thereby lowering the entry barrier for the use of these components and enabling a broader section of the global scientific community to reap all their benefits.

ANTARES (Arizona-NOIRLab Temporal Analysis and Response to Events System)

As one of the early developers of the ANTARES alert-broker, I continue to work with the team on refining its capabilities and explore new ways to reap the most benefit from them. Driven by the barrage of data from present time-domain surveys and the expected surge with upcoming surveys, my collaborators and I are designing and implementing effective and efficient algorithms to data-mine for novel events.

DRAGONS (Data Reduction for Astronomy from Gemini Observatory North and South)

I contribute to the development of Gemini’s data reduction pipeline, primarily by performing science verification tasks.