1. Can you describe your role in the SDSS collaboration and what you enjoy most about it?
Catalog Archive Server (CAS) Data Scientist, helping the collaboration and the world make the most of this awesome dataset.
2. Can you tell us about your educational background and how you got interested in the field of astronomy/astrophysics?
B.S. in Computer Science and Physics, PhD in Astronomy; childhood fascination with astronomy that was aided and abetted by Carl Sagan and his Cosmos TV Series.
3. What projects are you currently working on and what are you most excited about?
The SciServer Science Platform – a generic science platform that provides a collaborative Jupyter notebook environment for server-side analysis.
4. Can you describe how you balance work and personal life, and what advice would you give to someone just starting in the field?
As an empty nester, I actually don’t have any kind of rules to keep them apart, but I have never really felt that my work was getting in the way of my personal life – I’ve always been able to take time off when I needed it.
5. Can you share with us a unique hobby or interest that you have outside of work?
Not unique by any means, but I do have an unhealthy obsession with playing and watching tennis that began with Andre Agassi and then achieved totality with Roger Federer. Now that he’s retired, I’m not quite sure what to do with all that obsessive energy!