Jonathan Carifio
Research Software Engineer at Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolJonathan Carifio is a Research Software Engineer in Boston with a decade of experience applying computational methods to frontier physics problems, most recently completing a Ph.D. studying the type IIB string vacuum landscape. He builds robust, production-quality research software—authoring distributed SageMath tooling, C++ graph constructions with Boost, and neural-network estimators in Keras—while contributing test and visualization enhancements to high-profile open-source projects like Astropy and Glue. At the Center for Astrophysics he bridges astrophysics and software engineering, translating complex theoretical workflows into scalable code and databases that underpin published research. Known for clean test automation and careful numerical handling (e.g., radian/degree conversions and coordinate helpers), he blends deep math/physics training with pragmatic engineering to make speculative science reproducible and deployable.
10 years of coding experience
7 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (BS), Mathematics, Physics, 3.76, Bachelor of Science (BS), Mathematics, Physics, 3.76 at Tufts UniversityDoctor of Philosophy - PhD, Physics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Physics at Northeastern University
Github Skills (13)
data-visualizations10
astropy10
data-visualization10
data-visualisation10
pytest10
python10
data-science10
astronomy10
matplotlib10
testing10
visualizations9
linked-data9
visualization9
Programming languages (10)
Github contributions (5)
glue-viz/glue
Jun 2021 - Oct 2022
Linked Data Visualizations Across Multiple Files
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:13 reviews, 78 commits, 29 PRs in 1 year 4 months
Contributions summary:Jonathan primarily contributed to enhancing the visualization capabilities of the `glue-viz/glue` repository. They focused on implementing features for polar scatter plots, including degree support, radian tick mark display, and origin restrictions. Additionally, the user refactored code, fixed subset selection issues, and made improvements to the Python export functionality, ensuring correct radian conversions. Further work included updates to axis label behavior and test suite adaptations.
data-analysispythonlinked-datadata-sciencemultiple-files
astropy/astropy
Nov 2022 - Nov 2024
Astronomy and astrophysics core library
Role in this project:QA Engineer / Test Automation Engineer
QA Engineer / Test Automation EngineerContributions:2 reviews, 1 PR, 6 comments in 2 years 1 month
Contributions summary:Jonathan focused on improving the testing framework within the `astropy/astropy` repository, a core library for astronomy and astrophysics. Their contributions involved adding and modifying tests for coordinate helper functionalities, addressing deprecated getter usages, and refining the testing structure. The user updated existing tests by incorporating subplots and pytest's warning features and also added a changelog entry for bugfixes.
astrologypythonscienceastrophysicsastrodynamics
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