I'm Josh, a postdoctoral researcher working with
Professor Wolfgang
Kerzendorf
and the Kerzendorf Group at Michigan State University.
I specialize in radiative transfer and plasma modeling for spectral synthesis, and I am the primary
developer of the open-source STARDIS code, which
simulates light passing through stellar atmospheres. I contribute broadly to codes under the
TARDIS-SN umbrella,
which are used by astrophysicists worldwide. All of our software is open-source, thoroughly documented,
and built with accessibility in mind. I believe that good scientific software should be usable by anyone.
The less work we need to do fighting with our software, the better science we can produce and the more
we can learn about our universe.
My research sits at the intersection of observation and theory. I build detailed models of stellar
atmospheres and explosive transients to simulate escaping light, which we compare against observations
to learn about the structure and composition of the objects we study. Earlier in my career, I focused on
searching for surviving companions of Type Ia supernovae to probe their progenitor systems, drawing on
archival Hubble imaging and data from the revolutionary Gaia mission.