Gabriel Torrealba

Background

About Gabriel Torrealba

I am a Data Scientist and an astronomer. I did my PhD at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, UK. I held a postdoctoral position at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taipei, Taiwan. During my academic career, my research focused on one of the most fundamental question of modern physics: the nature and origin of Dark Matter. I always had a strong interest in machine learning, which is why I transitioned to data science where I am now applying the skills I developed in academia to challenging problems in industry. I am particularly interested in natural language processing and computer vision, whose uses have given remarkable results in many fields, ranging from astrophysics, particle physics, medicine, the stock market and industry. As a Data Scientist, I am currently developing and using such tools in the financial industry developing and evaluating trading strategies. During my PhD, I developed tools to mine large surveys to find and characterise satellite galaxies. As a result, I discovered several new galaxies, some of which have extreme properties that have proven to be very valuable in constraining the properties of Dark Matter. Additionally, I have also developed algorithms to classify variable stars by means of their luminosity and ways to automatically and systematically characterise galaxies light profiles in 2D images.