Contact Information
Departamento de Matematica y Fisica Aplicadas, Facultad de Ingenieria, Universidad Catolica de la Santisima Concepcion, Alonso de Ribera 2850, Concepcion, Chile
Employment
- 2025 - Present: Associate Professor, Universidad Catolica de la Santisima Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile
- 2021 - 2024: Assistant Professor, Universidad Catolica de la Santisima Concepcion, Concepcion, Chile
- 2018 - 2021: Associate Specialist / TESS Scientist, University of California Santa Barbara, CA, USA; Las Cumbres Observatory, CA, USA
- 2014 - 2018: Support Astronomer, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
- 2011 - 2014: 3-year FONDECYT fellowship, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
- 2009 - 2011: PUC Postdoctoral Fellow, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Santiago, Chile
- 2007 - 2008: EARA Early Stage Training Secondment Stay, Institut d'Astrophysique de Paris, Paris, France
- 2005 - 2009: Ph.D. Student, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, La Laguna, Spain
Education
- 2021: LASPAU Harvard University, USA
Diplomado en Innovacion en la ensenanza de la Ciencia, Tecnologia, Ingenieria, Humanidades y Matematicas - 2020: Data Engineering Nanodegree, Udacity (certificate)
- 2009: Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias / Universidad de La Laguna, Spain
Ph.D. Physics / Astrophysics - 2005: NJIT and Rutgers University, USA
M.Sc. Applied Physics - 2003: University of Kempten, Germany
Industrial Engineer for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology
Scholarships
- 2005 - 2008: EARA Marie Curie (EST) Doctoral Fellowship, European Association for Research in Astronomy, Instituto de Astrofisica de Canarias, Spain
- 2004 - 2005: Fulbright Grant, Fulbright Commission, Germany
- 2004 - 2005: Provost Scholarship, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA
Grants
- PI Artificial Intelligence R&D project fund for the Biobio Region from the Biobio Regional Government (GORE), "Development of a hybrid artificial intelligence and biological model for monitoring and predicting microbiological balance in wastewater treatment plants" (CLP 15,000,000)
- Co-I Artificial Intelligence R&D project fund for the Biobio Region from the Biobio Regional Government (GORE), Chile, "Detection and identification of Mundo Pacifico service installations using Computer Vision and AI" (CLP 15,000,000)
- Co-I CORFO "SCAI-LAB: Supercomputing Laboratory for Artificial Intelligence" (USD 7,000,000)
- Co-I ANID FONDECYT Regular 2024, "Searching for terrestrial exoplanets with optimized radial velocities"
- ANID Fondos de Astronomia 2023 Convocatoria Quimal, "The DECam Galactic Plane Legacy Database" (CLP 200,000,000)
- UCSC Internal Research Project 2023 (CLP 4,000,000)
- Kickstarter Grant 2021 KSP-6, "Assessing Crowded Field Photometry measured with the Rubin Pipeline", Co-PI (USD 30,000)
- Kickstarter Grant 2021 KSP-7, "DECam DDF Undergrad Research", Co-PI (USD 29,820)
- ANID FONDECYT Postdoctoral 2012 (CLP 20,800,000)
Academic Leadership and Professional Service
- LSST-Chile National Committee, 2025
- Internationalization Team Lead, UCSC Project "Ingenieria 2030" (link)
- Open Science Team Member, UCSC Project "Ingenieria 2030" (link)
- LSST-DA Board Member since 2025 (link)
- Local Organizing Committee, Exo Chile 2026: The Chilean Exoplanet Community Meeting, Apr. 2026 (link)
- Member of Academic Committee, Ph.D. Program in Artificial Intelligence (link)
- Universidad Catolica de la Santisima Concepcion Seminars Organizing Committee, Jan.-Dec. 2024
- Member of the Rubin Observatory Users Committee, 2022-2024
- PI In-Kind Contributions to Rubin Observatory System Integration, Test, and Commissioning Efforts: "Observing support and science validation of time series photometry" (SITCOMTN-050)
- Co-I In-Kind Contributions to Rubin Observatory System Integration, Test, and Commissioning Efforts: "Science validation for astrometry" (SITCOMTN-050)
- Commissioning liaison for the TVSSC
- Organizing Committee, Astronomy on Tap (AoT) Santa Barbara
- Peer reviewer for "Astronomy & Astrophysics" and "Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society"
- NASA review panels (ADAP, NPP), 2019
- IAC Seminars Organizing Committee, Apr. 2008 - Sept. 2009
- Local Organizing Committee, ARENA Workshop: "Telescope and instrumentation robotization at Dome C", Mar. 26-29, 2007, Puerto Santiago, Tenerife, Spain
Conferences and Public Talks
- Invited Panelist, Plenary Discussion: "How to increase LATAM participation", LSST@LATAM 2025
- Invited Speaker, Plenary Talk: "The Vera C. Rubin Observatory: Status, science and opportunities for the Chilean community", SOCHIAS Annual Meeting, 2025
- Speaker, Workshop on Ultracool Dwarfs in the Solar Neighborhood with Rubin LSST, 2024
- Speaker, "Semana de la Matematica en la UCSC": "Intuiciones Probabilisticas en Astronomia, Medicina e Inteligencia Artificial", 2024
- Speaker, Sello Universidad Catolica de la Santisima Concepcion: "El origen del Universo", 2022
- Speaker, Seminario DMFA: "Objetos transientes y variables con el Observatorio Rubin", 2021
- Speaker at Rubin PCW, 2019
- Speaker at TVS-SMWLV Workshop, 2019
- Speaker, AoT Santa Barbara: "Building Habitable Worlds", 2019
- Speaker, AoT Delaware: "Last star standing", 2019
Languages and Computer Skills
Languages: German (native), Spanish (fluent), English (fluent)
- Python (including JupyterHub): excellent
- LSST science pipeline: advanced
- GitHub: advanced
- TensorFlow, PyTorch, JAX: intermediate
- Gluster, Slurm, Parsl, Kubernetes: intermediate
- SQL / NoSQL: intermediate