Dan Foreman-Mackey

Daniel Foreman-Mackey
Center for Cosmology & Particle Physics
Department of Physics
New York University

(917) 327-3473
dan.iel.fm
danfm@nyu.edu

I'm a Ph.D. candidate in the Center for Cosmology & Particle Physics at New York University working with David W. Hogg.

I'm interested in approximate hierarchical inference, exoplanet populations, and data analysis in general. I mostly work with large public datasets in astronomy. I also contribute to and maintain some open source projects on GitHub.

Education

2010– Ph.D. Candidate, Physics, New York University, New York, New York, USA Advisor: David W. Hogg
2008–2010 M.Sc. Physics, Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada Advisors: Lawrence M. Widrow & David A. Hanes
Thesis: Dynamical Constraints on the Mass of M31
2004–2008 B.Sc. Honours Physics, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada Advisor: Maria Kilfoil
Thesis: Microrheology of Microtubule Networks

Research Experience

2010– Research Assistant, Data analysis & inference in astronomy New York University, New York, New York
Advisor: David W. Hogg
2008–2010 Research Assistant, Dynamical modeling using globular cluster kinematics Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Advisors: Lawrence M. Widrow & David A. Hanes
2008 Research Assistant, Science Education Research and Development The WOW Lab at McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Advisors: Brian Alters & Maggie Weller
2007–2008 Honours Thesis Project, Microrheology of Microtubule Networks McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
Advisor: Maria Kilfoil
2007 Undergraduate Research Assistant, X-Ray Binaries & Globular Clusters Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Advisor: David A. Hanes

Teaching Experience

2011 Laboratory Instructor, Introductory Experimental Physics I (PHYS-UA 91) New York University, New York, New York
2008–2010 Laboratory Instructor, Introductory Physics (PHYS 107) Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
2009 Grader, Linear Algebra and Geometry (MATH 133) The WOW Lab at McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Honors & Awards

2012 Horizon Fellowship in the Natural & Physical Sciences New York University, New York, New York
2010– Henry M. MacCracken Fellowship New York University, New York, New York
2007 NSERC Undergraduate Summer Research Award Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

Publications

2013 emcee: The MCMC Hammer [PASP in press] Daniel Foreman-Mackey, David W. Hogg, Dustin Lang & Jonathan Goodman
Submitted Probabilistic Catalogs for Crowded Stellar Fields [arXiv:1211.5805] Brendon J. Brewer, Daniel Foreman-Mackey & David W. Hogg
2013 The Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Treasury IV. A Probabilistic Approach to Inferring the High Mass Stellar Initial Mass Function and Other Power-law Functions [ApJ, 762, 123] Daniel R. Weisz, Morgan Fouesneau, David W. Hogg, Hans-Walter Rix, Andrew E. Dolphin, Julianne J. Dalcanton, Daniel Foreman-Mackey, Dustin Lang, L. Clifton Johnson, Lori C. Beerman, Eric F. Bell, Karl D. Gordon, Dimitrios Gouliermis, Jason S. Kalirai, Evan D. Skillman & Benjamin F. Williams

Talks & Posters

Jan. 2013 Oral Presentation at Hack & Tell NYC Title: Decisions vs. Recommendations: WTF is for lunch?
July 2012 Oral Presentation at Galaxy Coffee at MPIA The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
Title: The Mass of M31: A fully self-consistent dynamical model
July 2012 MCMC tutorial at Python Lunch at MPIA The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
Title: Fitting data using MCMC in Python
June 2012 Oral Presentation at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario Title: Next Generation Data Analysis in Astronomy
Sept. 2011 Oral Presentation at PyGotham in NYC Title: Python & MongoDB in Astronomy
Aug. 2011 Oral Presentation at Galaxy Coffee at MPIA The Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Heidelberg, Germany
Title: Detecting the Undetectable: Photometric calibration in the time domain
May 2010 Oral Presentation at The CASCA Annual General Meeting The Canadian Astronomical Society, St. Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada
Title: Parameters & Priors: The Mass & Transverse Velocity of M31
May 2010 Poster Presentation at CITA@25/BOND@60 The Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Title: Parameters & Priors: The Mass & Transverse Velocity of M31
2009–2010 Oral Presentations at the QUARG Journal Club Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada
Sept. 2007 Oral Presentation at The Canadian Undergraduate Physics Conference Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
Title: X-Ray Binary Systems Related to Globular Clusters