It is my honor to accept the nomination for the Astropy Coordination Committee (CoCo).
My involvement with Astropy began in 2020 as a PhD student, motivated by a
desire to contribute back to the software that has underpinned much of my
research since my undergraduate studies. I found in Astropy a community that
was welcoming, collaborative, and a place to grow as a developer and scientist.
When I was asked to help maintain the cosmology subpackage, I was honored to
take on the responsibility – seeing it as an opportunity for learning and a way
to support the wider astronomical community. I view this nomination to the CoCo
in a similar light. Since 2020, my engagement has dramatically increased. I
have become a maintainer for units, contributed to nearly every subpackage in
the core library, and helped teach Astropy at AAS meetings and university
workshops. I have also regularly attended coordination meetings, helping to
organize the most recent one.
In recent years, I have been increasingly involved in shaping the future of
Astropy. Many of these efforts share a common aim: strengthening Astropy by
deepening its interoperability within the broader scientific Python ecosystem.
With Cycle 3 funding, I authored a report on the future of astropy.units,
which now forms the foundation for our ongoing efforts to modernize and improve
the subpackage in alignment with the Array API standard and multi-array-library
support. In that spirit, I have contributed directly to the Array API
specification and volunteer within the Data-APIs consortium to help with static
typing efforts. These works compound with the Metrology API – an ongoing
consortium effort I helped start between the units-in-Python libraries to
increase compatibility and interoperability of units handling across the
ecosystem. Similarly, I have collaborated with cosmologists to establish a
shared API for cosmology libraries – already adopted by the GLASS project and
their integration in mission pipelines.
It is also my privilege to serve as an inaugural member of the Strategic
Planning and Organizing Committee (SPOC), which is responsible for shaping
Astropy’s long-term vision and roadmap. Our goal is twofold: to enable the
development of new capabilities while renewing existing infrastructure to
provide a stronger foundation. One way I have worked to realize this vision in
practice is through my core role in APE 26, the first in a series to modernize
the coordinate-frames infrastructure.
Serving on the Coordination Committee would be a natural extension of this work.
I see CoCo service as complementary, providing the means to connect the SPOC’s
long-term strategic planning with the governance and coordination needed to turn
that vision into sustained, project-wide progress.
My perspective on Astropy has evolved alongside my career. As a graduate
student, I was driven to update the tools I used daily for research in HPC, ML,
and SoTA computational frameworks. I saw all the ways Astropy was lacking and I
pushed strongly towards modernizations. Now, as a postdoctoral researcher, I
have had the opportunity to meet hundreds more astronomers at different career
stages, all around the world, and gain a clearer view of how essential Astropy’s
stability and reliability are to the community, from exploratory research to
long-term observatory operations. I believe that sustaining this dual commitment
to improvement and to stability is central to Astropy’s continued success.
It would be a privilege to contribute to that mission as a member of the
Coordination Committee, where I will work to maintain this balance: ensuring
that Astropy remains a reliable foundation for the community while continuing to
evolve in step with the broader scientific Python ecosystem.