Experience

1. AstroAI Deputy Director

   Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian September 2024 – Present
   Leading Multimodal Generative AI Group within AstroAI.

2. Deputy End-to-end Scientist for the Chandra X-ray Observatory Data Systems

   Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian September 2017 – September 2024
   Led the development of algorithms for the Chandra Source Catalog

Education

1. PhD in Astronomy

   Leiden University November 2007 – June 2012
   Thesis on Mid-Infrared Spectroscopy of Starburst Galaxies: From Spitzer-IRS to JWST-MIRI. Supervised by Prof. Bernhard Brandl.
   Read Thesis

2. MSc in Astronomy

   Leiden University February 2006 – October 2007
   GPA: 4.0/4.0 Specialized in machine learning and robotics.

3. BSc in Physics

   Universidad Nacional de Colombia January 2000 – June 2005

   GPA: 3.9/4.0

   Minored in Mathematics. President of AI Club.

Skills & Hobbies

Technical Skills

Python & PyTorch

Machine Learning

Cloud Computing (AWS/GCP)

Hobbies

Hiking in the Rockies

Building Custom PCs

Sci-Fi Reading

Awards

Best Paper Award

NeurIPS ∙ December 2022

Awarded for groundbreaking work on efficient training of large models.

AI Innovation Grant

National Science Foundation ∙ June 2021

$500,000 grant for research in ethical AI development.

Outstanding PhD Thesis

Stanford University ∙ June 2019

Recognized for contributions to scaling laws in deep learning.

Languages

100%

English

100%

Spanish

100%

Spanish