Board Member (2023–26)
I have taught physics and astronomy for 25 years at Minnesota State University Moorhead and I serve as a core member of the Astropy development team, having spent over two thousand hours working on development. I have been using Python to work with astronomical images and do photometry for over a decade, work that began when I found that the free, open-source options were limited.
I have been involved in the AAVSO since attending a meeting remotely in 2016. Recently, I served as chair of the Data Quality Task Force, whose task was to broadly evaluate the quality of AAVSO data and recommend ways to make future data even more useful to researchers. In addition, I rewrote the Variable Star Plotter in Python over the last couple of years.
I am honored to serve on the AAVSO board. I have leadership experience at my university, including serving as president of the faculty during COVID at a time when the university was also laying off faculty. I am confident that I can play a productive role in the business that the Board needs to carry out, which extends to many areas beyond software.
This page last updated: 2023-11-14