In this bootcamp, I teach students how to use the industry’s most popular programming languages and tools in data analytics (Python, JavaScript, HTML/CSS, SQL, Hadoop, Tableau, Machine Learning, R, ...).

At Leiden University, I was the project manager and lead scientist on the MASCARA (Multi-site All-Sky CAmeRA) project. MASCARA is a battery of small robotic telescopes to search for planets around the brightest stars. I worked on all aspects of the project, including but not limited to

• Optical design

• Mechanical design

• Procurement and optical testing

• Instrument integration

• Development of control and data acquisition software

• Development of a web interface for monitoring purposes

• Development of command-line tools for remote operations

• Operations and maintenance

• Supervision of multiple bachelor students

I co-designed CHIRON (PI Prof. D. Fischer), a high-resolution Echelle spectrometer for the 1.5m telescope at CTIO. CHIRON has four modes of observation: bare fiber (R = 25 000), slit (R = 80 000), image slicer (R = 80 000) and narrow slit (R = 120 000). I have been involved in all steps of the process: optical and mechanical design, procurement, assembly, integration, optical testing, commissioning and data extraction for the spectrograph. In particular, I have worked on the opto-mechanical design of a modified Bowen-Walraven image slicer for CHIRON.

Additionally, I was the project manager and one of the lead scientists for a major upgrade of the instrumen to improve the throughput and the stability of the spectrograph. As project manager of this upgrade, I learned how to manage a small team of people, while keeping track of both time and budget constraints.

I also co-designed, assembled and tested the Yale Doppler Diagnostics Facility, a bench-mounted high-resolution (up to R ~ 250 000) echelle spectrograph, designed to study the impact of hardware choices on radial velocity (RV) precision in the lab. While working on all these projects, I became very familiar with opto-mechanical engineering software, such as SolidWorks and Zemax.

In addition, I have been involved in other non-instrumentation related projects such as our Lick/Keck Planet Search observing campaign, PlanetHunters.org (a citizen science project that makes it possible for anyone to sieve through data taken by the NASA Kepler space mission), abundance analysis using Spectroscopy Made Easy (SME) and multi-planet modelling of astrometric and RV data.

Over the years, I have developed strong programming skills. I particularly enjoy data analysis and numerical simulations (Matlab, IDL, Python, LabView). I wrote pipelines to monitor the stability of CHIRON (temperature, pressure, stability of the spectral lines) and to automatically generate plots and webpages to display the results.