Ben Keller
Assistant Professor at The University of Memphis
Memphis, Tennessee, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolBen Keller is an Assistant Professor in Physics and Materials Science at the University of Memphis who researches the numerical modeling of galaxy formation and evolution over cosmological timescales. With 14 years of experience spanning a PhD from McMaster, an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship at Heidelberg, and academic leadership of the MGS group, he blends astrophysics, fluid dynamics, and high-performance computing to tackle large-scale simulation challenges. He contributes to open-source scientific software—most notably extending the widely used yt project to robustly handle Tipsy cosmological particle data—bringing practical expertise in data formats, endianness, and domain detection. Comfortable in both research and teaching, he also communicates science through authored videos and coursework, and combines a physics foundation with a computer science minor to bridge theory and scalable code.
14 years of coding experience
2 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Physics, Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Physics at McMaster UniversityBachelor of Science (BSc), Physics, Computer Science Minor, Bachelor of Science (BSc), Physics, Computer Science Minor at University of Calgary
Github Skills (13)
python10
astrophysics10
scientific-computing10
fileio9
file-access9
data-structure9
file-processing9
data-structures9
file-handling9
clib8
c-compiler8
cosmology7
numerical-methods6
Programming languages (6)
Github contributions (5)
yt-project/yt
Mar 2014 - Sep 2017
Main yt repository
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:71 commits, 1 PR, 1 push in 3 years 6 months
Contributions summary:Ben primarily contributed to the yt-project/yt repository by modifying and extending the functionality of the code to handle Tipsy data, a format for storing particle data from cosmological simulations. Their work included implementing support for auxiliary files, addressing particle ordering issues, and adding specific fields for units and smoothing. They also made improvements to the loading of Tipsy files, including automatic domain boundary detection and fixes related to endianness and header validation.
pythondatafinite-element-analysisgeophysicsnuclear-engineering
bwkeller/oh-my-zsh
Feb 2016 - Apr 2025
Contributions:16 pushes in 9 years 3 months
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