2023-: Currently a PhD Student at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researching both supernovae and tidal disruption events (TDEs). Supernova work currently consists of reducing data from DECam in order to incorporate it into the Young Supernova Experiment, which currently uses only Pan-STARRS and ZTF data. Current work on TDEs centers around simulating how LSST will see them once it becomes operational in 2025. All this work is in Python, which I've been using since 2018.
2021-2023: M.A Physics at Stony Brook Univeristy. Thesis research was testing how well a simplified method for calculating the redshifts of a population of binary black hole (BBH) mergers detected by LIGO could accurately estimate the cosmic expansion history of the universe (H_0, Omega_m, w, etc.). Around this time is also when I started using the skills picked up in Advanced Graduate Data Science Certification to make some side projects using stats and baseball.
2016-2020: B.S Astronomy at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Thesis work was on simulating the visibility of supernovae in the Milky Way and their extinction due to dust. This was then compared to historic supernova rates to see if dust could explain the lack of seen supernovae since 1604. My minors in Physics and Computer Engineering also taught me how to use C, C++, and SystemVerilog, the latter of which was used to make a digital guitar effects board on an Altera DE-2 Development Board.
If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at [email protected]. More information about me can be found on my personal website: https://ctmurphey.github.io