Jason Watson
Staff Scientist at DESY
Zeuthen, Brandenburg, Germany
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJason Watson is a staff scientist and instrumentation-focused data scientist with a decade of experience building control, calibration and analysis pipelines for high-speed imaging instruments in astrophysics. He combines deep Python expertise (numpy/SciPy/pandas/matplotlib/numba, asyncio) with C/C++ extensions via SWIG and pybind11 to deliver high-performance, production-grade software for telescopes and space cameras. At DESY he led ground support and camera readout systems for ULTRASAT and the CTA SST cameras, designing gRPC control servers, co-simulations for firmware/software parallel development, and scalable telemetry pipelines. An active open-source contributor, he strengthens scientific software quality through testing and backend development in prominent projects like gammapy and ctapipe. Colleagues rely on him for coordinating small analysis teams and turning complex hardware constraints into reliable, testable software systems.
10 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - DPhil, Astrophysics, Doctor of Philosophy - DPhil, Astrophysics at University of OxfordMaster of Physics - MPhys, Physics with Astrophysics, First Class Honours, Master of Physics - MPhys, Physics with Astrophysics, First Class Honours at University of Leicester
Github Skills (11)
algorithm10
astropy10
algorithms10
pytest10
python10
image-processing10
numpy10
testing10
astronomy9
data-analysis9
numba9
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
cta-observatory/ctapipe
Apr 2016 - Aug 2020
Low-level data processing pipeline software for CTAO or similar arrays of Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:60 reviews, 529 commits, 155 PRs in 4 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Jason made several contributions that involved modifying and extending the data processing pipeline software for Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes. These contributions include implementing various features for processing the camera images in the event data, applying corrections and extraction parameters. The contributions involved working with low-level data processing and data reduction.
arraypipelinedata-processingprocessing-pipelineastronomy
gammapy/gammapy
Feb 2019 - Feb 2019
A Python package for gamma-ray astronomy
Role in this project:QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:16 commits, 2 PRs, 7 comments in 5 days
Contributions summary:Jason's commits primarily focus on creating and modifying tests within the `gammapy/gammapy` repository. They implemented tests for solid angle calculations within the `maps` module and adjusted existing test values, suggesting a focus on ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the codebase. Furthermore, the user made changes to test files within the `cube` and `data` modules, demonstrating a comprehensive approach to verifying different aspects of the project.
gamma-rayraypythonnumpyastrophysics
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