Last year one of my graduate students developed a novel algorithm for detecting “weird” signals in photometric time series, such as those taken by NASA’s Kepler Mission and now TESS. An undergraduate students will work in my team to run the algorithm on TESS data, which is just starting to be released publicly (https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/tess/status.html). We hope to detect strange signatures, possibly including analogs to Tabby’s Star, interacting binaries and perhaps even technosignatures.

This project is NOT accepting applications.

Faculty Advisor

  • Professor David Kipping
  • Department/School: Astronomy/Arts and Science
  • Location: Morningside Campus
  • Research interests: The discovery and characterization of new extrasolar worlds, and the search for the signatures of life and intelligence within the cosmos.

Project timeline

  • Earliest starting date: 06/17/2019
  • End date: 08/28/2019
  • Number of hours per week of research expected during Summer 2019: ~35

Candidate requirements

  • Skill sets: Knowledge and experience of: Python and CUDA; – Architecture of GPUs and heterogeneous systems; – Data structures and algorithms for massively parallel systems- clusters and clouds; – Profiling and performance optimization of GPUs or other compute accelerators using different frameworks.
  • Student eligibility (as of Spring 2019): freshman, sophomore, junior, senior, master’s
  • International students on F1 or J1 visa: eligible