Tyler Barna
PhD Student in Astrophysics at the University of Minnesota
About me
As an undergraduate, I developed a strong interest in observational astronomy. At Princeton, I worked with Dr Melinda Soares-Furtado, then a PhD candidate, compiling a catalog of periodic variables in open clusters from Kepler K2 observations. Following that, I worked with Professor Saurabh Jha at Rutgers University on a senior honors thesis fitting the early time lightcurves of Type Ia supernovae from TESS data to search for potential companion signatures. After graduating with a Bachelor’s degree in Astrophysics at Rutgers University in 2021, I joined the Astrophysics PhD program at UMN.
Since starting at UMN, I’ve worked with Professor Michael Coughlin to develop a pipeline to automate ZTF follow-up observations of potential companions to gravitational wave sources detected by LIGO.
Personal Life
I spent the bulk of my childhood in a New Jersey suburb near Philadelphia and aspired to study astronomy from an early age; after graduating high school, I began my undergraduate degree at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, where I was a member of the Honors College. Moving to Minnesota has been the first time I’ve lived outside of New Jersey, and I’ve enjoyed discovering more about the Twin Cities in the time I’ve been here. In my spare time, I enjoy cooking, collecting records, watching films, playing the guitar, and reading.
news
| May 15, 2024 | I attended the Hot Wiring the Transient Universe VII workshop in Toronto, Canada. I gave my first contributed talk, where I discussed the use of the Multi-Armed Bandit algorithm in selecting fast transients for follow-up observation. |
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| May 7, 2024 | I completed the Data Science in Multi-Messenger Astronomy (DSMMA) program at UMN. I spoke about the use of a Multi-Armed Bandit algorithm in searching for kilonova candidates in wide field surveys, particularly ZTF. |
| Apr 20, 2024 | My inagural first-authored paper was accepted for publication by MNRAS, An Online Framework for Fast Transient Lightcurves |
| Mar 24, 2024 | I spent most of March 2024 in Germany, working with NMMA collaborators at the University of Potsdam, followed by a weeklong workshop in Wismar. The workshop was a great opportunity to meet with the NMMA team and discuss the future of the project. I also had the chance to explore Europe for the first time. I’m looking forward to continuing our work on NMMA, and I’d love to make it back to Germany soon! |
| Jan 10, 2024 | I presented a poster on my work with NASA’s General Coordinates Network (GCN) at the 243rd AAS meeting in New Orleans. I also helped with the GCN Booth throughout the week as an exhibitor. |
selected publications
- NMMA: A nuclear-physics and multi-messenger astrophysics framework to analyze binary neutron star mergersarXiv e-prints May 2022
- VizieR Online Data Catalog: K2 periodic variables in M35 & NGC2158 (Soares-Furtado+, 2020)VizieR Online Data Catalog Apr 2020