Aarya Patil

Aarya Patil is an LSST Discovery Alliance Catalyst Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. She specializes in large-scale data-driven studies of the Milky Way's formation and evolution, leveraging computational methods and open-source software development.

• PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics (University of Toronto)
• Key contributor to Astropy project (finance committee member)
• Active in science education through Astropy Training School and Pan-African School for Emerging Astronomers

Research Focus
Aarya's work combines galactic astrophysics with statistical computing, particularly through:

• Functional Principal Component Analysis (FPCA) of stellar spectra
• Chemical tagging validation via spectral structure analysis
• Development of open-source tools like fpca.py and delfiSpec
• Application of Sequential Neural Likelihood (SNL) for stellar parameter inference

Scientific Contributions
specdims repository implements methods to extract intrinsic spectral features while accounting for systematics, enabling studies of chemical homogeneity in galactic structures like the M67 open cluster.

Awards & Recognition

• Data Sciences Institute Doctoral Student Fellowship (University of Toronto)
• Google Summer of Code participant (2017) and mentor (2021)

Community Engagement
Active in open science initiatives, Aarya serves on the Astropy project's finance committee and organizes educational programs bridging data science and astronomy.