Sanchit Sabhlok
Physics, Ph.D., 2024
Sanchit completed his Physics PhD in 2024 and investigated circumgalactic medium of distant quasar and the environments around high-redshift protoclusters, as we as investigating new techniques for Point Spread Function reconstruction techniques for Adaptive Optics. Sanchit also had experience working on the laser range Apollo Project.
Sonata Simonaitis-Boyd
Physics Undergraduate Student
Sonata was an UC San Diego undergraduate student that studied computational physics. Sonata’s work involved analyzing Keck MOSFIRE and archival photometric data around high redshift galaxies.
Rachel Kepler
UCSD Graduate Student
Rachel was a 4th year undergraduate studying astrophysics and conducting observations using PANOSETI and NIROSETI instruments.
Nils-Erik Bjorn Rundquist
Software Engineer
Nils worked in the OIRlab as a software engineer for five years (2018-2023) developing instrument simulation and data reduction software for IRIS, OSIRIS, and Liger. Nils graduated with a B.S. in Physics with an Astrophysics specialization at UC San Diego.
Maren Cosens
Physics, Ph.D., 2022
Maren complete her Physics PhD in 2022 and investigated how star forming regions evolve and influence their host galaxies, as well contributed significantly to astronomical instrumentation for Keck Observatory Liger. Maren is now a Brinson Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at Carnegie.
Arun Surya
Postdoctoral scholar
Arun was a TMT/IRIS postdoctoral scholar from 2018 - 2020. Arun specialized in optical design of the integral field spectrograph, detector readout design, and development of the data reduction and software analysis tools. Arun is now a postdoctoral scholar at the Indian Institute of Astronomy.
Kalp Mathur
Engineering Undergraduate Student
Kalp is a 4th year undergraduate student studying Structural Engineering with a Focus in Aerospace Structures. He was working on instrumentation for Liger on Keck Observatory.
JonJohn (Robert) Ramos
Engineering B.Sc., 2020
Robert conducted NIROSETI observation for three years on the Lick Observatory Nickel Telescope and did some engineering design and detector characterization. Robert received his B.S. in Structural Engineering and is now Masters student in engineering.
Colin Barrett
Physics B.Sc., 2020
Colin conducted NIROSETI observations for two years on the Lick Observatory Nickel Telescope. Colin received his B.S. in Physics. He is now in the airforce training to become a pilot.
Andrey Vayner
Physics, Ph.D., 2019
Andrey completed his Ph.D. thesis in the OIRlab and investigated how supermassive black holes and galaxies form and evolve using multi-wavelength data sets. Andrey is now a postdoctoral scholar at Johns Hopkins.
Guillaume Shippee
Physics B.Sc., UCB, 2019
Guillaume worked as a lab assistant from Jan - Aug 2019 on Panoramic SETI. Guillaume is now an engineer at Qualcomm working on machine learning algorithms that are embedded in hardware design.
Nina Shirman
Physics B.Sc., 2019
Nina worked in the OIRlab for 2 years and help study AGB stars using high-contrast imaging instruments and conducting observations using the NIROSETI instrument. Nina is now a Research Scientist Associate at Lockheed Martin.
Clayton Hultgren
Physics B.Sc., 2018
Clayton was a 4th year undergraduate studying astrophysics and conducting observations using the NIROSETI instrument and is now in the Air Force.
Greg Walth
Postdoctoral Scholar
Greg was the TMT/IRIS postdoctoral scholar from 2016 - 2018. Greg made significant advancements to the IRIS data reduction system and simulator. His research interest is in studying the most massive galaxy clusters in cosmic lenses to studies. Greg is now a postdoctoral scholar at Carnegie Observatories.
Siyang Li
Physics Undergraduate Student
Siyang is a Physics undergraduate at UC Berkeley student who worked in the UCSD OIRLab in summer 2018. He worked on characterizing near-infrared detectors for the PANOSETI project.
Brenda E. Araiza S.
Aeronautic Engineering Undergraduate Student
Brenda was a Aeronautic Engineering undergraduate student from Instituto Tecnológico de Tijuana who worked in the UCSD OIRLab in summer 2018. She worked on structural analysis for the PANOSETI Project.
Brian Merino
Summer 2017 Undergraduate
Brian was a STARS summer undergraduate in 2017 and worked with Greg Walth on research of high-redshift gravitationally lensed galaxies.
Andres Duenas
Physics B.Sc., 2016
Andres worked in the UCSD OIR lab during July 2015 to May 2017, first as an undergrad and then as a lab assistant. Andres played an integral role in observing with NIROSETI instrument and conducting research.
Melisa Tallis
Physics B.Sc., 2016
Melisa worked in the UCSD OIR lab during February to December 2016 as an undergrad, and played an integral role in observing and developing post-processing routines for the NIROSETI instrument.
Tran Tsan
Summer 2016 Undergraduate
Tran was a summer undergraduate researcher in the UCSD OIR lab in 2016, and worked on TMT/IRIS simulations of distant, passive galaxies. Tran is now a graduate student at UC San Diego and works in the experimental cosmology lab with Professor Arnold.
Dan Marshall
Physics M.Sc., 2016
Daniel worked in the UCSD OIR lab from May 2015 to May 2016 as Physics graduate student. His work focused on instrumentation and data simulations for IRIS on TMT. Dan is now Co-founder and Chief Scientist at Varda Space Industries.
Etsuko Mieda
Astrophysics, Ph.D., 2015
Etsuko received her Astrophysics Ph.D. from University of Toronto in 2015 working with Prof. Wright. Her work focuses on galaxy evolution and developing new innovative instrumentation for adaptive optics systems. Etsuko is currently a Support Astronomer at Subaru Observatory.
