In May 2019 I started my research project with Dr. Andrej Prša of the Villanova Astrophysics and Planetary studies department. I had to learn and research many concepts in Physics and Astrophysics before I could begin to apply my programming skills to the project. I my task was to create a program that analyzed an observed binary star light curve and determine the parameters of the star system based on that. Due to the era of big data of astronomy, it is necessary to automate this, however, accurate results are hard to determine computationally. The project synthesizes a list of tens of thousands of sample curves which are then compared to the observed curve via brute force. This technique was then compared to a computationally intense artificial neural network to understand the pros and cons of each technique. I worked closely with the neural network project to help train the set efficiently. This research was then presented at the 235th American Astronomical Society conference. The poster can be viewed here.
I am currently student directing a program that teaches middle school children basic computer science topics. The students come to Villanova's on Saturday mornings in the Spring. We encouraged them to work hard in school and go to college and help answer questions they have about growing up. This was meaningful to me because it allows students to have the oppurtunity and resources to peruse their passions they otherwise would not due to financial background. I became very enthusiastic about this program over my first couple years at Villanova and eventually became the student director. This program was terminated for spring 2020 due to COVID-19.
In the summer of 2018 I had the oppurtunity to travel to London and intern for Black Diamond's Mogul division. The Mogul team does web development for companies who need a training platform for their employees. I started working with the backend developers using PHP. Here I learned how to use CAKE as a framework for the projects. The main project while I was there was using SQL tables to be able to display the site in different languages. I worked with an Italian team member in translating the client's pages and being able to call the different languages on the pages with PHP.
Email: apetrallo@gmail.com
