Research

My research interests lie in the general area of stars and stellar systems, especially as tracers for how galaxies formed and evolved over the last 13 billion years. In parallel, I have a long-standing interest in advancing new technology (both hardware and software) to open new astronomical discovery space windows.

The union of my scientific and technical interests is reflected in my strong publication record in the technical literature (especially SPIE proceedings – the international society of optic engineers) as well as high-impact astronomy and astrophysics journals.

My current interest is the application of modern data science approaches (including machine learning) for exploration and discovery in large public datasets with information on millions to billions of astronomical objects. Mathematically, this is akin to illuminating and exploiting structure in n-dimensional point clouds. Key datasets of interest have been produced or will be produced by experiments I helped enable in the past, including the Large Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). Much of my development work uses data for the ESA Gaia mission. This is a new area for me. I am working on developing deeper expertise so I can work on real (as opposed to toy) research questions, and build collaborations with AI/ML experts at UTSA. This focus area is an excellent framework for undergraduate experiential learning since skills learned have wide application beyond astronomy.

Publications
More than 150 professional publications, h-index = 26
(49 referred | 29 as 1st, 2nd, or 3rd author)
SAO/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Key Words
Data-intensive astronomy
N-dimensional point clouds
Stellar spectral libraries
Stellar populations in early-type galaxies
Host stars of exoplanets
Optical-IR observatories and associated systems