About

Hello, I am Brandon! I am a senior undergraduate Physics and Astronomy major at the University of Pittsburgh. During my time at Pitt, I worked with Prof. Arthur Kosowsky and Dr. Yilun Guan on Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) data analysis. We worked with unsupervised machine learning for a little while; however, we wanted to get closer to working with real time data, so we moved to unsupervised machine learning. I have also worked on an undergraduate research group called STEPUP (Survey of Transiting Extrasolar Planets at the University of Pittsburgh). STEPUP uses the Allegheny Observatory’s 16” Keeler Telescope detect exoplanets using the transit photometry method.

My current research interest is applying machine learning to data from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). This is interesting to me because ACT has approximately 3000 detectors that are continuously collecting data (2000 times per second). That is roughly a large book printed out every second. The Hillman Library currently has 1.5 million volumes if we do some quick math, it would only take ACT approximately 17 days to fill Hillman. Not all this data is usable, with 3000 detectors it is common for detectors to malfunction. To make the best inferences of our universe, Cosmologists need the most accurate map of the CMB. This is where machine learning comes to play, where I will talk more about in my research section. Outside of school, I can be found in my kitchen cooking, baking or in the gym. You might also see me walking around on a lovely day.