Contact Information
1002 W. Green Street,
Urbana, IL 61801
M/C 221
Office Hours
Research Areas
Biography
I am an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Astronomy at UIUC. I work at the intersection of time-domain astrophysics, cosmology, AI and statistics. I study the Universe with stars that blow up, like to find fast, faint, bright, lensed, recurrent and otherwise peculiar transients, and my group did much of the pioneering work to use artificial intelligence in astrophysics, particularly for time-domain analysis.
I serve as Deputy Director for Astrophysics Research at the NSF-Simons SkAI Institute in Chicago, and Deputy Director of the Center for AstroPhysical Surveys. I am also a Simonyi NSF-CAREER Fellow, Analysis Coordinator of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (DESC), co-PI of the Young Supernova Experiment (YSE), and PI of the Scalable Cyberinfrastructure for Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (SCIMMA) team.
I deeply value the mentor-mentee relationship and work with several students, undergraduates and graduates alike, postdocs and research scientists. I think we are privilged to study the cosmos, and am deeply committed to public outreach. When I'm not working, you can find me hiking, or behind a camera lens.
If you'd like to get in touch, shoot me an email, or swing by my office - always happy to get a cup of coffee.
Research Interests
Cosmology
Time-domain Astrophysics
Survey Science
Multi-messenger Astrophysics
Statistics
Data Science
Machine learning
Supernovae
Research Description
My research interests lie at the intersection of multi-messenger and time-domain astrophysics, cosmology, statistics and data science. I work on wide-field surveys developing machine learning (particularly neural network-based) methods for real-time detection and classification of variable and transient sources, Bayesian models for cosmological inference with type Ia supernovae, and establishing an all-sky network of faint spectrophotometric standards for LSST, NGRST and future projects.
I am Analysis Coordinator for LSST's Dark Energy Science Collaboration (formerly deputy Analysis Coordinator and convener of the Time Domain Working Group), co-PI of the Young Supernova Experiment. I am also a PI of the SCiMMA Team (https://scimma.org). I've been a member of the Pan-STARRS, ESSENCE, Foundation, MzLS, SIRAH, and RAISIN surveys, among others.
Education
Physics, Ph.D., Harvard University
Physics, B.S. (Hons), Illinois Wesleyan University
Additional Campus Affiliations
Associate Professor, Astronomy
Associate Professor, Physics
Associate Professor, National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA)
External Links
Recent Publications
Bohlin, R. C., Deustua, S., Narayan, G., Saha, A., Calamida, A., Gordon, K. D., Holberg, J. B., Hubeny, I., Matheson, T., & Rest, A. (2025). Faint White Dwarf Flux Standards: Data and Models. Astronomical Journal, 169(1), Article 40. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-3881/ad93d8
Shah, V. G., Foley, R. J., & Narayan, G. (2025). The Fastest Path to Discovering the Second Electromagnetic Counterpart to a Gravitational Wave Event. Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 137(2), Article 024101. https://doi.org/10.1088/1538-3873/adb076
Aleo, P. D., Engel, A. W., Narayan, G., Angus, C. R., Malanchev, K., Auchettl, K., Baldassare, V. F., Berres, A., de Boer, T. J. L., Boyd, B. M., Chambers, K. C., Davis, K. W., Esquivel, N., Farias, D., Foley, R. J., Gagliano, A., Gall, C., Gao, H., Gomez, S., ... Wainscoat, R. J. (2024). Anomaly Detection and Approximate Similarity Searches of Transients in Real-time Data Streams. Astrophysical Journal, 974(2), Article 172. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad6869
Angus, C. R., Woosley, S. E., Foley, R. J., Nicholl, M., Villar, V. A., Taggart, K., Pursiainen, M., Ramsden, P., Srivastav, S., Stevance, H. F., Moore, T., Auchettl, K., Hoogendam, W. B., Khetan, N., Yadavalli, S. K., Dimitriadis, G., Gagliano, A., Siebert, M. R., Aamer, A., ... Smith, K. W. (2024). Double “acct”: A Distinct Double-peaked Supernova Matching Pulsational Pair Instability Models. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 977(2), Article L41. https://doi.org/10.3847/2041-8213/ad9264
Farias, D., Gall, C., Narayan, G., Rest, S., Villar, V. A., Angus, C. R., Auchettl, K., Davis, K. W., Foley, R. J., Gagliano, A., Hjorth, J., Izzo, L., Kilpatrick, C. D., Perkins, H. M. L., Ramirez-Ruiz, E., Ransome, C. L., Sarangi, A., Yarza, R., Coulter, D. A., ... Lin, C. C. (2024). SN 2021foa: The “Flip-flop” Type IIn/Ibn Supernova. Astrophysical Journal, 977(2), Article 152. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad8cd3