Research

Time Domain Astronomy

Our research focuses on explosive transients in the sky, particularly supernovae and their progenitor systems. We develop methods to analyze large datasets from time-domain surveys.

Urban Science and Interdisciplinary work

We apply data science methods to urban and geospatial problems, working on projects ranging from criminal justice to public health and food security.

Team Members

Principal Investigator

Federica Bianco

Federica Bianco (she/her)

Stearing the ship. Astrophysicist, Data Scientist.

Current Members

Willow Fox Fortino

Dr. Willow Fox Fortino (they/them)

Graduated Student

Willow works on modeling stripped envelope supernova light curves. She enjoys playing the guitar with mediocrity, is a beginner pointillism artist, has a small fountain pen and ink collection, and is an amateur lock picker.

Tatiana Acero Cuellar

Tatiana Acero Cuellar (she/her)

PhD Candidate

Tatiana works on CNN models to classify transients and discover new Astrophysical Objects. She is a Colombian physicist that loves animals a lot and because she loves them she doesn't eat them. She is on the way to being a scientist.

Siddharth Chaini

Siddharth Chaini (he/him)

PhD Candidate

Sid studies transients and their diversity using data-driven methods for probabilistic modelling, classification and anomaly detection, and finding representations to capture the physics of spectra.

NSF

Shar Daniels

Shar Daniels (they/them)

PhD Candidate

Shar is applying neural networks to continuous readout astronomical images, where one of the spatial axes tracks time, to explore the subsecond astrophysical domain and evaluating the performance of LSST's observing strategy for fast transients.

NSF

Easton Honaker

Easton Honaker (he/him)

PhD Candidate

Easton studies brown dwarfs in the Solar Neighborhood using large surveys like LSST, Roman, Euclid, and SphereX. He is particularly interested in their luminosity function and kinematics as probes of the Milky Way's structure and evolution. Easton referees water polo and you can sometimes catch him officiating NCAA games on ESPN!

NSF

Mathilda Nilsson

Mathilda Nilsson (she/her)

PhD Candidate

Mathilda works on identifying anomalous astronomical phenomena using the color vs. magnitude-change phase space.

Ally Baldelli

Ally Baldelli (she/her)

PhD Candidate

Ally works on classifying supernovas and other transients low-resolution spectra using machine learning. She spends her free time crocheting, cooking, snowboarding, or hiking with her cat.

Wenxin Wu

Wenxin Wu (she/her)

Researcher Intern

She uses deep learning methods such as Deformable DETR and U-Net to detect and segment light echoes in astronomical images. Just obtained a bachelor in finance at University of Delaware China campus, about to start a bachelor in Physics at the University of Munich, German. She loves cats and dogs, traveling, and discovering good food in new places. She is curious about science and the world around her, and is slowly finding her way toward becoming a scientist.

jaden

Jaden Clarke (he/him)

Research Intern

Senior at Delaware State University, NASA Space Science fellow, works on information theory applications to autoencoder neural networks.

NSF
Abdubrahim

Abdubrahim Silla (he/him)

Research Intern

Senior at Lincoln University, works on information encoding of sparse multivariate time series with AI as part of the DEMAD Science Data Science Corps program.

Adeoluwa Afolabi

Adeoluwa Afolabi (he/him)

Research Intern

Adeoluwa applied a pretrained machine learning model and developed an autoencoder to reconstruct and analyze multi-band astronomical light curves using Python. He is originally from Nigeria and loves ping pong, Soccer and watching basketball. He aspires to become a Machine learning Engineer

Augustina

Augustina Lorda (she/her)

Research Intern

Graduated from Lincoln University with a Computer Science Bachelor in 2026, now a full time back end developer in her native Uruguay, works on information encoding of sparse multivariate time series with AI as part of the DEMAD Science Data Science Corps program

Alumni and extended FASTLab family

Somayeh Khakpash

Dr. Somayeh Khakpash (she/her)

PostDoc - Rutgers Univesity

Somayeh works on generating templates for stripped-envelope supernovae using Gaussian Processes. She is an expert in microlensing and machine learning. She enjoys reading and traveling.

Xiaolong Li

Dr. Xiaolong Li (he/him)

Postdoc - John Hopkins UniversitytNow an LSST Catalyst PostDoctoral Fellow at JHU, Xiaolong works on light echoes, building AI platform for the discovery of AI in LSST, and evaluating the performance of LSST's observing strategy.

Riley Clarke

Dr. Riley Clarke (he/him)

Postdoc - University of Singapore

Now a PostDoc at the University of Singapore, Riley works on stellar flare and time-domain data processing and detrending with Principal Component Analysis. He grew up in Fairbanks, AK and likes biking, hiking, skiing, playing music (trumpet \& guitar), and cooking. He also enjoys nerd stuff like video games, anime & manga, science fiction/fantasy, and tabletop role-playing games.

Rodiat Ayinde

Rodiat Ayinde (she/her)

Ph.D. Candidate - Victoria University of Wellington, NZ

specializing on large language models

Huei Sears

Huei Sears (she/her)

Postdoc - Rutgers

works on observations of high-energy, enigmatic transients to understand their origins

She is an avid fan of pop music and loves to give public talks!

    UD Alumni

    • πŸ’» David Cardenas - 2020 - Electrical Engineering Undergraduate StudentNSF
    • 🎡 Feranni Adepoju - 2023 - Undergraduate student 2023 - Music (Lincoln University)NSF
    • πŸ”­ Aria Tameze - 2023 - Undergraduate student 2023 - Physics (NYU) NSF
    • 🎡 Jendaya Wells - Undergraduate student 2022 - Music (Lincoln University)NSF
    • πŸ”­ Ming Lian - 2019-2022 - Astrophysics Graduate student, UDel
    • πŸ”­ Sid Patel - 2021 - Astrophysics Undergraduate student, UDel
    • πŸ“Š Manjula Ibrahim - 2021 - MS Data Science, UDelNIH
    • πŸ“Š John Clifford - 2021 - MS Data Science, UDelNIH
    • πŸ”­ Ghinane Racid - 2020 - Astrophysics Undergraduate student UDel
    • πŸ“Š Desiderio Pilla - 2020 - MS Data Science
    • πŸ”­ Umer Zubair - 2019-2020 - MS Physics
    • πŸ›οΈ Colleen Mueller - 2019 - Public Policy Undergraduate Student
    • πŸ›οΈ Sunday T. Heagbetus - 2019-2020 - MS Public Policy
    • πŸ™οΈ Julien Baur - Postdoc 2018-2019 - Urban Science postdocNIH
    • ✏️ Gabriella Cammarata - 2017-2018 - MS Industrial Design
    • πŸ™οΈ Bea Steers - 2018 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Jon Kastelan - 2018 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Chun Chieh Tsai - 2018 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Charlie Moffett - 2018 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Prince Abunku - 2018 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Isha Chaturvedi - 2018 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Guobing Chen - 2018 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Hrafnkell HjΓΆrleifsson - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Michelle Manting Ho - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Christopher Prince - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Achilles E. A. Saxby - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ”­ Ilan Renistein - 2017 - MS Applied Physics
    • πŸ™οΈ Yukun Wun - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Nuvrita Monarizqa - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Dongjie Fan - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Victor Sette Fripp - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Adriano M. Yoshino - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Xianbo Gao - 2017 - MS Urban Science
    • πŸ™οΈ Trang Tran Linh Dam - 2017 - MS Urban Science

Funding

We are grateful for the support from the following agencies and institutions.

NASA NSF DOE NIH NSF JTF LSST-DA

  • NSF AST: 2511639 P.I. Bianco – Chance favors the prepared astrophysicists: forcing serendipitous discoveries in the era of big surveys and AI
  • NSF AST: 2206828 P.I. Street (UD P.I. Bianco) – Preparing for Science with the Rubin Observatory: Groundwork to Explore the Galactic Population of Exoplanets
  • NSF AST: 2308016 P.I. Bianco – Every Datapoint Counts: Atmosphere-aided Flare Studies in the Rubin era
  • NSF HDR DSC: 2123264 P.I. Bianco – Collaborative Research: HDR DSC: Delaware and Mid-Atlantic Data Science Corps
  • NSF AST: 2108841 P.I. Bianco – Detecting and studying light echoes in the era of Rubin and Artificial Intelligence
  • NSF D-INS: 2039857 P.I. Klinkger, CoP.I. Bianco – Characterizing the Global Illicit Trade in Energy-Critical Materials using Machine Learning, Remote Sensing, and Qualitative Research
  • NSF CSI: 1841594 P.I. Brady (NYU P.I. Hogg) – Community Planning for Scalable Cyberinfrastructure to Support Multi-Messenger Astrophysics
  • GRFP P.I. Daniels – Supports Shar Danieli's thesis
  • NASA FINEST P.I. Bianco – Supports Siddharth Chaini's thesis
  • NASA EPSCOR P.I. Gizis (CoP.I. Bianco) – Simulating Solar Neighborhood Brown Dwarfs to Guide Archival Searches and Future Surveys
  • NASA ADAP P.I. Modjaz
  • DOE P.I. Bianco – Grid Dynamics and Energy Consumption Patterns Through Remote Observations of City Lights
  • NIH P.I. Dobler, CoP.I. Bianco – The Effects of Subpopulations and Policy Change on COVID19 Hospital Demand Models
  • Templeton Foundation – P.I. Bianco (Catalyst Mentor),
  • Heising-Simons – Leveling the Playing Field: Preparing for Astrophysics with LSST
  • LINCC Frameworks Community Event Award, DP2 Hack-day
  • LINCC Frameworks Community Event Award, PCW 2020 Hack-day and Documentation Sprint
  • Royal Astronomical Society – Support to organize a Theo Murphy meeting on Multimessenger Gravitational Lensing
  • UD GUR & UD DSI Seed Grant – Echoes of light: detection with artificial intelligence; Exploring Delaware Prosecutorial Justice Data
  • Google Cloud – COVID-19 Google Cloud Platform credits
  • OAD COVID-19 grant – Simulating vulnerable population as massive particles

Resources