WhoamiI’m a astronomy and programming nerd turn research software engineer.
I obtained my PhD in very-high-energy astrophysics studying TeV blazars with the VERITAS telescope, with a focus on implementing advanced analysis techniques into the VERITAS analysis chain (mostly C++[Cern’s ROOT]).
Since then I’ve been developing next generation instruments to study the cosmos at McGill University (C++ [Geant4], Python).
I’m also a Computer Technology Fellow at the Trottier Space Institute (TSI), where my focus is on supporting high performance computing within the TSI and conducting computational research in astrophysics, planetary science, atmospheric science, astrobiology and other space-related research.
At the TSI, I also focus on teaching programming methods, development, and best practices to graduate students and researchers. My philosophy is to remove boundaries to programming and development, rather than teaching dense low-level topics that the end user doesn’t need to know. Instead, I focus on tools to simplify workflow, teaching skills at a practical level, and encouraging increasing complexity when it is needed. If you don’t need to massively parallelize your code, then you don’t need to spend a week writing/debugging the code to do it!
Currently my focus is on developing open source analysis tools for gamma-ray astrophysics and data analysis for the CHIME telescope.
In my free time I program, watch rugby and sci-fi TV, and pet my two cats.
Ste O’Brien