Contact Information
Urbana, IL 61801
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
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
Pan, Y. C., Jheng, Y. S., Jones, D. O., Lee, I. Y., Foley, R. J., Chornock, R., Scolnic, D. M., Berger, E., Challis, P. M., Drout, M., Huber, M. E., Kirshner, R. P., Kotak, R., Lunnan, R., Narayan, G., Rest, A., Rodney, S., & Smartt, S. (2024). Measuring the ejecta velocities of type Ia supernovae from the pan-STARRS1 medium deep survey. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 532(2), 1887-1900. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stae1618
Shah, V. G., Narayan, G., Perkins, H. M. L., Foley, R. J., Chatterjee, D., Cousins, B., & Macias, P. (2024). Predictions for electromagnetic counterparts to Neutron Star mergers discovered during LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA observing runs 4 and 5. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 528(2), 1109-1124. Article stad3711. https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stad3711
Xie, Y., Chatterjee, D., Narayan, G., & Yunes, N. (2024). Neural post-Einsteinian framework for efficient theory-agnostic tests of general relativity with gravitational waves. Physical Review D, 110(2), Article 024036. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.024036
The Dark Energy Science Collaboration (2024). Testing the LSST Difference Image Analysis Pipeline Using Synthetic Source Injection Analysis. Astrophysical Journal, 967(1), Article 10. https://doi.org/10.3847/1538-4357/ad3635