Nathan Sandford
Graduate Student Researcher
Berkeley, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolNathan Sandford is a sixth-year PhD candidate in Astronomy & Astrophysics at UC Berkeley with eight years of research and teaching experience focused on stellar spectroscopy, galactic chemical evolution, and Local Group dwarf galaxies. He conducts hands-on observational and modeling work with Prof. Dan Weisz, blending spectral analysis with population-scale chemical evolution studies. Nathan has a strong pedagogical track record—leading large introductory astronomy courses and training graduate instructors—and earned an Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor award for course leadership at Berkeley. His projects have included semi-analytic galaxy modeling (C/Python/R) and a stacked Fermi-LAT analysis during an SLAC internship, showing versatility across coding, data analysis, and instrumentation. Based in Berkeley and transitioning toward postdoctoral work, he brings a mix of rigorous research, large-course management, and community-focused mentoring that helps translate complex astrophysical inference into reproducible results. An underappreciated strength is his repeated role mentoring peers and coordinating large teams, reflecting both technical depth and people-first project execution.
8 years of coding experience
1 year of employment as a software developer
Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astronomy and Astrophysics, Doctor of Philosophy - PhD, Astronomy and Astrophysics at University of California, BerkeleyBachelor's degree, Physics (Focus in Astronomy), 3.97, Bachelor's degree, Physics (Focus in Astronomy), 3.97 at Pomona College
Github Skills (12)
calculator9
stellar9
python7
astronomy7
reduction7
crystallography6
random-walk6
cosmology6
pipeline6
molecular-simulation5
high-energy-physics5
astrophysics4
Programming languages (2)
Github contributions (5)
NathanSandford/Chempy-Widget
Apr 2018 - Apr 2018
Contributions:23 commits, 12 pushes, 1 branch in 6 days
NathanSandford/Chem-I-Calc
Jul 2019 - Apr 2021
Chemical information calculator for resolved stellar spectroscopy
Contributions:1 release, 421 commits, 14 PRs in 1 year 8 months
pythonchemicalresolvedstellarcalculator
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