Alex Mcdaniel Email & Phone Number

Greenville, Sc, Us

Greenville, South Carolina, United States

Clemson, South Carolina, United States

In this role I was responsible for performing independent research in high-energy astrophysics and conducted numerous successful studies covering different topics of interest in the field. My various research projects involved the use of advanced mathematical and statistical concepts, as well as extensive data management, cleaning, analysis, and visualization. Beyond pure science, in this role I was also responsible for generating external funding through research proposals, presenting results to broader audiences at conferences and in publications, and mentoring undergraduate and graduate students. Some summary points of this position include:Extracted, cleaned, and organized datasets from various astrophysical catalogs containing ~100s-1,000s of records to obtain optimal samples for analysis, primarily using pandas and numpy/scipy for relevant data transformations.Applied joint maximum likelihood methods to search for gamma-ray emission over the course of several distinct projects, performing simultaneous fits to source populations with typical sample sizes ranging from ~ 30 to >500 objects.Reduced pipeline runtimes by a factor of 10-15x by optimizing performance and parallelizing python based analysis pipelines on remote computing clusters.Awarded >$150,000 in grant funding as well as observation time as Principal Investigator (PI) across multiple instruments and organizations.

Santa Cruz, Ca

In this position I conducted a number of research projects as part of my PhD thesis. This work encompassed image processing and data analysis of astrophysical observations as well as extensive code development implementing mathematical models and scientific computing into analysis and modeling pipelines. Some of these pipelines were publicly released and maintained. Furthermore, during this time I was involved in department and campus-wide leadership positions, including representing the graduate student body on the campus-wide Committee on Research. Some summary points of this role include:- Analyzed X-ray telescope data, combining over 25 observations from multiple instruments observing 11 separate targets. This work used custom developed X-ray data reduction tools along with Python, numpy, pandas, and OpenCV for image processing.- Developed in C++ and publicly released the scientific computing tool RX-DMFit tool (>35 citations), used for modeling and predicting astrophysical emission from dark matter annihilations.- Served as the graduate student representative on the campus-wide Committee on Research, responsible for advising the Chancellor on stakeholder interests related to the university research mission and granting faculty funding awards.

Santa Cruz, Ca

Santa Cuz, Ca

As a Teaching Assistant in the Physics department I was responsible for the instruction of physics courses and running laboratory instruction sessions for hundreds of students. I independently managed lesson plans and evaluation of students. This position required the ability to clearly communicate complex topics in physics to audiences unfamiliar with the field.

Santa Barbara, Ca

In this role I worked as part of the Lubin Lab on the DE-STAR or Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation project developing hardware and designing experimental setups. Namely I assisted in developing an experimental setup for measuring photon pressure induced thrust in a vacuum environment. This also included the design with CAD software (Solidworks) and machining of hardware components for a vacuum chamber experimental apparatus

Santa Barbara, Ca

As a Physics Course Reader, I was responsible for grading hundreds of weekly physics assignments and often developing solutions to the assigned work. This work required extensive time management to meet weekly deadlines as well as strong attention to detail while working through hundreds of documents weekly.

Doctor Of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Physics

Master Of Science - Ms, Physics

Bachelor’S Degree, Physics