I work on the Chandra X-ray Observatory at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory. I am one of a handful of people tasked with guaranteeing that the telescope is pointed where it is supposed to be, and that the data we get is scientifically useful. This involves analyzing the data from the telescope, writing tools to visualize telemetry, and to automatically monitor the instruments.
In order to do that, I have developed models to estimate the magnitudes of stars, correlated stars observed with Chandra with Gaia, studied how increasing temperatures affect the quality of our measurements, and generally speaking, how the pointing performance of the telescope changes over time.
Earlier I worked on cosmic rays, at the Pierre Auger Observatory and IceCube: reconstructing the air showers that high-energy particles make when they hit the atmosphere, and what those showers say about where the particles came from.
Previous Work
Two pieces about the cosmic-ray work, written in 2018 and brought up to date in 2026 with what happened after I left it.
- Cosmic Ray Muons — measuring the muon content of air showers with IceTop, and the puzzle that simulations still cannot reproduce.
- Detecting Neutrinos — using a surface array to reject cosmic-ray background and pick out astrophysical neutrinos at the South Pole.
Go
My main hobby is playing Go, an ancient East Asian game known as Baduk (바둑) in Korea and Weiqi (围棋) in China. I have played Go for many years, and represented Venezuela at the World Amateur Go Championship in 2005, 2009 and 2024, and at the Korea Prime Minister Cup in 2012.
Joseki explorer
A joseki dictionary built the empirical way: mined from more than 400,000 games. Walk into a corner sequence and see what professional players actually chose, how often, and how that has evolved over more than a century and a half. Each joseki has a historical curve, which shows how its popularity has changed over time. You can literally see how some disappeared with the advent of AI, and some rose to prominence.