Axel Donath
Postdoctoral Researcher at Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolAxel Donath is a postdoctoral researcher at the Center for Astrophysics with 13 years of experience applying statistical methods and machine learning to low-count X-ray and gamma-ray astronomy. He leads development of the open-source Gammapy package, is a sub-package maintainer for Astropy, and has made substantive contributions to widely used projects like astropy/photutils and astropy/astropy. His research blends instrument-combining analysis, Poisson-noise deconvolution (including a Python wrapper for LIRA), and reproducible scientific software—work he has presented at SciPy and taught in hands-on tutorials. Based in Cambridge, MA, Axel pairs rigorous academic training (PhD, Heidelberg) with practical engineering, serving as an editor for the Astronomy & Astrophysics track at JOSS and as an active member of the CHASC astro-statistics collaboration. He brings a rare combination of domain expertise, open-source stewardship, and attention to numerical detail that improves both methods and community tools.
13 years of coding experience
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1.0, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astronomy and Astrophysics, 1.0 at Heidelberg University
German, English, French
Stackoverflow
875reputation
5kreached
56answers
0questions
Github Skills (20)
python10
mathematical10
source210
photogrammetry10
numpy10
astropy10
convolution10
modeling10
photo-viewer10
data-analysis10
testing9
data-visualizations9
data-visualisation9
data-visualization9
numerical-integration8
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
gammapy/gammapy
May 2013 - Jan 2023
A Python package for gamma-ray astronomy
Role in this project:
Data Scientist and Backend Developer
Data Scientist and Backend DeveloperContributions:1596 reviews, 5597 commits, 1850 PRs in 9 years 9 months
Contributions summary:Axel contributed to adapting flux point tests, improving plotting capabilities, and modifying various dataset-related components. Their work included changes to the handling of different formats and improvements to the accuracy of tests by adjusting precision values. The user's commits also demonstrated a focus on API improvements, with edits to the class structure, code style, and refactoring for better consistency across the codebase.
gamma-rayraypythonnumpyastrophysics
astropy/astropy
Apr 2013 - Dec 2016
Astronomy and astrophysics core library
Role in this project:Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:3 reviews, 156 commits, 2 PRs in 3 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Axel primarily contributed to the `astropy/astropy` repository by adding examples to table methods and developing new mathematical models, including Gaussian, Sine, and Box models. The user's commits reveal work on model derivatives and related tests, including the implementation of both 1D and 2D versions of models. They also fixed issues related to the normalization and use of various kernel models for convolution.
astrologypythonscienceastrophysicsastrodynamics
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