Research

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

The intersection 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 approaches related to computer vision and topological data analysis) 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. I am working on developing the expertise needed to work on real (as opposed to toy) research questions. To that end, I am building collaborations with AI/ML experts at UTSA. This is a new area for me.

Much of my current work uses data from the ESA Gaia mission. Later, I hope to explore data from the Large Survey of Space and Time (LSST), the Dark Energy Survey (DES), and the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) — all experiments I helped to advance while serving as director of the U.S. nighttime, ground-based national observatory.

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)
ORCID: 0000-0002-7678-2155

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