​Through my research and my functional work as an NRAO postdoctoral fellow with the GBT and ALMA, I have extensive experience using, supporting, and improving radio telescopes, including:

Observations and Data Reduction
I have 14 years of experience using radio telescopes including ALMA, the VLA, the GBT, the ARO 12m and SMT, the GMRT, the ATCA, and Mopra as well as experience using optical and infrared telescope. ​I have reduced both interferometer and single dish data at frequencies ranging from 1.4 to 350 GHz using a variety of reduction packages (CASA, AIPS, GBTIDL, Miriad, Class, Unipops, ASAP). To do this, I have written several data reduction pipelines, including one to reduce EVLA radio recombination line data and another to reduce spectral line mapping data from the 4mm receiver on the GBT. I am currently writing a pipeline for GBT continuum polarization data.

Science Ready Data Products
 At the NAASC, my functional work has focused on producing science ready data products for users. I contributed to developing guidelines for imaging ALMA data as a member of the North American imaging team. Using these guidelines, I developed and maintain imaging template scripts. The goal of these scripts was to produce more uniform imaging products given the wide range of imaging experience present at the NAASC. These scripts are used daily by NAASC staff to produce images and have resulted in significantly higher final image quality. I presented the results of this project in at talk at the SPIE meeting in Edinburgh.
 
As a member of the ALMA scientific software support group, I have been involved in testing of the ALMA imaging pipeline. For the first release of the pipeline (C3R3), I was responsible for comparing the pipeline-produced images with manually produced images and contributed a section to the C3R3 report. For the second release (C3R4), I produced a third of the benchmark images used for a more detailed quantitative comparison with the pipeline produced images and contributed to the internal discussion of the pipeline recommendations. I am currently working on developing an auto-masking algorithm for the imaging pipeline to improve the final image products and reduce the time spent cleaning the data.

Hardware and Software Testing
A major focus of my career has been developing new telescope capabilities to answer key scientific questions. As a resident shared risk observer, I worked with the staff at the VLA to test a new correlator mode designed to obtain broadband continuum and narrow spectral lines simultaneously. This mode was released to the community for the 2013A semester. At the GBT, I led the astronomical commissioning of the new GBT backend (VEGAS). In this role, I worked with engineers, scientists, and software developers to understand how the backend works, to ensure that the backend was producing correct data, and to train new users of the backend. VEGAS was officially released to the user community in Spring 2014.
 
The CHANGES survey is one of many surveys taking advantage of the new wide-band continuum capabilities of the VLA and GBT. As part of this project, I am developing centimeter continuum observing modes for the GBT, which has been largely optimized for spectral line work. I organized a small workshop in June 2015 to bring together different groups working on this problem to share information, strategies, and techniques. During this workshop, we developed a suggested observing strategy, tested different basket-weaving and gridding algorithms, and produced preliminary reductions of data for our respective projects. 

I also have expert-level CASA experience and have contributed frequently to bug reporting and testing both as an EVLA resident shared risk observer and as a NAASC postdoc. 

User Support
As a postdoc at the GBT, I supported over 40 projects, which ranged from measuring the magnetic field of the solar corona with signals from the Messenger satellite to measuring dense molecular gas in infrared dark clouds in the Milky Way. I have continued to support a wide variety of projects as a contact scientist with ALMA as well as facilitate ALMA Community Day/“NRAO Live!” events and data reduction workshops.
 
I have extensive experience producing user documentation. Through my role in the VEGAS project, I updated the GBT Proposer's and Observer's Guide to reflect the new capabilities provided by VEGAS. As an EVLA resident shared risk observer, I wrote a well-received quick-start guide to the tool used to prepare VLA observations. Finally, I have independently produced documentation for the public including an AIPS scripting tutorial and a guide on observing.