Wynne T
- Research Program Mentor
PhD candidate at Ohio State University, Columbus
Expertise
Astrophysics, astronomy, cosmology, data science, Python, machine learning
Bio
I grew up in Oregon in the United States, and completed my B.S. in Physics at UCLA in the fall of 2018. While I was an undergraduate at UCLA and shortly after graduating, I was involved in various research projects. I studied the impact of different dust extinction laws on model high-redshift galaxy spectra in Python, I worked with large databases of asteroid observations for a data science project, and I helped analyze data from the Electron Losses and Fields Investigation (ELFIN) space satellite operated out of UCLA. Currently, I am a PhD student in Astronomy at The Ohio State University. I am in my fourth year, and am a part of a large international collaboration called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). DESI is a new and ambitious survey that will obtain spectra for over 35 million galaxies and quasars. It is the largest spectroscopic survey to date, and will probe the expansion history of the universe to a greater precision than ever before. The main goal of this is to study the nature of dark energy, the mysterious force that's causing the universe to expand at an accelerated rate. My specific project deals with reducing systemic error in one aspect of the analysis using machine learning methods. I'm very interested in dark energy and in cosmology more broadly, and would welcome a student that is interested in any of these topics, or simply wants to improve their coding skills!Project ideas
Exploring cosmic acceleration
In this project you'll have the opportunity to work with real supernovae data and determine if the universe is accelerating. This is a great introductory project for someone interested in learning more about cosmology and/or coding. You will use Python to analyze the data and perform calculations.
Introductory data science or machine learning
This is a great project for someone that's interested in getting started with Python and/or machine learning while working with large amounts of data. You will learn how to do so efficiently using various libraries in Python, and if you already know some Python, great! We will build on that. If not, this is not a problem at all. The topic of your data science or machine learning investigation can be anything you wish, including astrophysics!