Tom Donaldson
Consulting Computer Scientist at Space Telescope Science Institute
Baltimore, Maryland, United States
Summary
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RockstarTom Donaldson is a Consulting Computer Scientist with 11 years of software experience based in Baltimore and a long-standing affiliation with the Space Telescope Science Institute. He specializes in back-end development for scientific software, notably contributing robustness and standards support to the high-profile astropy library by improving VOTable parsing and adding TIMESYS/1.4 features. Tom combines practical code hygiene (flake8 cleanups) with deep domain knowledge in astronomy data formats, helping research teams reliably ingest and process complex observational data. His work reflects a focus on precision and interoperability in scientific tooling—skills cultivated over a career embedded in an institution that bridges astronomy research and software engineering.
11 years of coding experience
Github Skills (5)
astropy10
python10
astrophysics10
astronomy10
xml9
Programming languages (7)
Github contributions (5)
astropy/astropy
Jun 2019 - Jan 2023
Astronomy and astrophysics core library
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:70 reviews, 44 commits, 17 PRs in 3 years 7 months
Contributions summary:Tom primarily contributed to the `astropy/astropy` repository by addressing issues related to the parsing and handling of VOTable files. They focused on improving the robustness of the VOTable reader, specifically by addressing issues with masked strings in binary2 formats. Further contributions included code cleanup (flake8 improvements) and support for the VOTable 1.4 standard, encompassing the TIMESYS element and other features. The user's work enhances the library's ability to correctly parse and process astronomical data in various formats.
astrologypythonscienceastrophysicsastrodynamics
tomdonaldson/astroquery
Jun 2018 - Mar 2019
Functions and classes to access online data resources. Maintainers: @keflavich and @bsipocz
Contributions:1 PR, 26 pushes, 1 branch in 9 months
datamaintainers
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