Pauline Barmby
Department Chair, Physics & Astronomy at Western University
Ontario, Canada
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolPauline Barmby is a research-active academic leader with 12 years of experience shaping astronomy programs and running observational extragalactic research using the world's largest telescopes. As Department Chair and former Acting Dean at Western University she has overseen large faculty and student cohorts, launched data-focused programs, and co-chaired Canada’s Long Range Plan for Astronomy. Her work blends hands-on science mentoring postdocs and students with strategic service on national and international observatory committees. She also contributes to widely used open-source tooling in astronomy, helping improve Astropy documentation and units—an example of translating specialist research needs into community-facing software improvements. Passionate about equity, public engagement, and professional development, she pairs rigorous PhD-level science with practical leadership that advances both research and the next generation of scientists.
12 years of coding experience
14 years of employment as a software developer
PhD, Astronomy, PhD, Astronomy at Harvard UniversityBSc, Physics & Astronomy, BSc, Physics & Astronomy at The University of British Columbia
English, python, French
Github Skills (6)
astropy10
units-of-measurement10
astronomy10
documentation10
python9
astrophysics9
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
astropy/astropy
Feb 2015 - Jun 2015
Astronomy and astrophysics core library
Role in this project:
Technical Writer & Developer (Minor)
Technical Writer & Developer (Minor)Contributions:15 commits, 3 PRs, 17 comments in 3 months
Contributions summary:Pauline primarily contributed to documentation updates and enhancements within the Astropy repository. Their work included adding documentation for the newly implemented "furlong" unit, incorporating it into the standard units documentation, and updating the changelog. They also made changes to the controlling axes documentation, including a refactor of section titles and demonstrating how to invert an axis, further demonstrating their work in the realm of documentation.
astrologypythonscienceastrophysicsastrodynamics
PBarmby/PBarmby.github.io
Jun 2014 - Jan 2023
Contributions:190 commits, 150 pushes in 8 years 7 months
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.