Welcome!

I'm a research astronomer at the University of California in Berkeley, the SETI Institute, and also Chief Scientific Officer at the space observing-startup SkyMapper Inc.

At Berkeley, I focus on direct imaging of young circumstellar dust disks (like our Kuiper Belt) and Jupiter-like planets (still warm from their formation) to learn about the outer reaches of planetary systems. I like to investigate what kinds of planetary systems exist in our galactic neighborhood and how those collections of planets, asteroids, comets, dust, and gas change over time.

At SETI, I manage the science campaigns of the SETI-Unistellar Citizen Science Network and work on two of those campaigns specifically: observing the changing brightness of the universe's most energetic explosions like supernovae and gamma-ray bursts, and following up on NASA-discovered transiting exoplanet candidates to confirm that they are indeed real planets with the characteristics we think they have (particularly those with long-period orbits that need monitoring over weeks, months, or years).

At SkyMapper, I lead the scientific observations, data analysis, and instrument development to fulfill our promise of observing "all the sky, all the time". Learn more at skymapper.io.

Here's the Berkeley press release for one of my papers, which presents 26 circumstellar "debris disks" imaged in detail via 4 years of observations by the Gemini Planet Imager Exoplanet Survey (GPIES). This study, only possible with contributions from the entire GPIES team, gives us an unprecedented collection of views into young planetary systems still organizing themselves during and just after planets have formed. The public version is on arXiv and the published journal article is available through the ADS listing.

Apart from that, please check out the tabs above to learn more about me and my research!

Me with GPI (the Gemini Planet Imager) at the Gemini South
observatory on Cerro Pachón, Chile.