Hi, I’m James

I’m an astronomy PhD candidate at the University of St. Andrews. I’m broadly interested in statistics, data science and machine learning.

Most of my research is centered around image processing applications. In particular, I’m interested in leveraging the tools available in machine learning frameworks (e.g. JAX, PyTorch) to fit models to imaging data. Using these tools, I’ve co-developed the image processing algorithms. PyTorchDIA is a new algorithm for image subtraction (aka Difference Image Analysis in the astronomy literature), which is a technique used for detecting and/or measuring brightness changes in astrophysical sources. More recently, I helped develop TheThresher, which is an approach to fitting models to large stacks of high frame-rate imaging data.