Christopher Theissen
Assistant Professor In Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC San Diego
California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolChristopher Theissen is an Assistant Professor of Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC San Diego with 11 years of experience bridging academic research and data science. He holds a PhD in Astronomy and dual BS degrees in Physics and Applied Mathematics, and applies machine learning, Bayesian methods, and advanced coding (Python, C++, Matlab) to tackle observational and theoretical problems. His career includes a NASA Sagan Fellowship, postdoctoral research across top universities, and a stint as a lead data scientist in industry, reflecting fluency in both research and production analytics. Known for turning complex astrophysical inference into reproducible code, he combines deep statistical rigor with pragmatic software engineering. Based in California, he brings a rare mix of hands-on data science, academic leadership, and applied problem-solving across astronomy and industry.
11 years of coding experience
8 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Arts (BA), Applied Mathematics, Bachelor of Arts (BA), Applied Mathematics at University of California, San DiegoBachelor of Science - BS, Physics, Bachelor of Science - BS, Physics at University of California San DiegoDoctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astronomy, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astronomy at Boston University
Stackoverflow
113reputation
6kreached
0answers
1question
Github Skills (34)
spectral10
spectra9
prism9
modeling8
python8
pandas8
cgi-bin8
simulations8
astronomy8
modeling-tool8
infrared7
tuple7
resampling7
manipulation7
jet7
Programming languages (4)
Github contributions (5)
ctheissen/WISE_Parallaxes
Apr 2018 - Feb 2025
Code to query IRSA catalogs and measure parallaxes using WISE multi-epoch data. See Theissen (2018) for more details.
Contributions:2 PRs, 31 pushes, 4 branches in 6 years 11 months
ctheissen/NIRSPEC-Data-Reduction-Pipeline
Feb 2018 - Aug 2024
NSDRP was developed by the Keck Observatory Archive. KOA is a collaboration between the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute and the W. M. Keck Observatory. NExScI is sponsored by NASA’s Exoplanet Program and operated by the California Institute of Technology in coordination with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Please contact the KOA Help Desk with questions: https://koa.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/Helpdesk/nph-genTicketForm?projname=KOA
Contributions:92 pushes, 4 branches in 6 years 6 months
observatorybinlaboratorycollaborationinstitute
Find and Hire Top DevelopersWe’ve analyzed the programming source code of over 60 million software developers on GitHub and scored them by 50,000 skills. Sign-up on Prog,AI to search for software developers.