Robby DeMartino’s Senior Project Introduction Blog

Hello, all!
My name is Robby DeMartino. I am a senior at BASIS Independent McLean and I am doing my senior project internship and research project in conjunction with the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at ASDRP (https://www.asdrp.org/compsci-eng). My on-site mentor is Mr. Robert Downing. He is incredibly experienced and knowledgeable. I plan to be working on two research projects that he directs at ASDRP: “Searching for Potentially Habitable Exoplanets” and “Searching for mini-Black Holes using Stellar Radial Distortion”. You can learn more about these projects here. Essentially, I will be using databases of exoplanets and stars provided by NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency) in order to identify potentially habitable exoplanets and black holes which are significantly smaller than the majority of those we detect currently. I am very excited to begin work on these projects. Unfortunately, due to the non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that I signed, I am not able to share specific information regarding the project, so I will be keeping my commentary in these blog posts general.

In order to accomplish these tasks, multiple different tools will be used in the parsing and interpretation of the data, including, but not limited to: Python, R, and SQL. Currently, I am proficient in Python, but not the specific Python libraries we will be using (such as Pandas). While I have never used R or SQL, I am eager to learn how to use these tools.

My goal for this blog is to document my experiences during my research project in a way that is interesting and understandable to everyone, even people who aren’t proficient with computers. That is why I will endeavor to explain concepts that some people might not be familiar with. Thank you so much for reading this blog post and if you have any questions, please leave a comment and I would be happy to do my best to answer it.

Robby DeMartino