Hello!
I’m a postgraduate student in astrophysics, and most of my work is about the how of astronomy: the code, hardware and instrumentation that turn photons into insight. Since 2024 I’ve worked with the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO) to bring the ROTSE-IIIc telescope in Namibia back to life, contributed to the open-source pyobs observatory control system, and built machine-learning tools for SAAO’s Intelligent Observatory. A few things I’ve built:
- ROTSE-IIIc observatory control system: rebuilding the control software of a 20-year-old robotic telescope in Namibia
- Automating Lesedi's nightly pre-flight: automating the nightly start-up of the Lesedi telescope, from reading the sky to calibrations
- Fornax A: a merger simulation: an excuse to learn C, by crashing two galaxies together
- Asteroseismology simulator: explore how stars oscillate, in your browser
- AstroTouch: turning telescope images into 3D-printable tactile models
I'm currently doing BSc (Hons) Astrophysics & Space Science at University of Cape Town, supervised by Dr R. Kuhn. My project is on detrending and optimising transit searches to find exoplanets in KELT-South light curves
My research interests are observational astronomy, robotic telescope networks, transients (XRBs and CVs) and machine learning for astronomical data. Away from the telescope I co-founded Zulelinye Outreach and make tactile models so that blind and visually impaired people can explore real astronomical data by touch.
News
- Jan 2026Greatest dream, doing NASSP Honours at UCT!
- 2025Completed my BSc in Astrophysics & Physics at the University of Cape Town.
- 2024Month-long residency with the pyobs team at the Institute for Astrophysics, Göttingen.
- Jan 2024Joined the ROTSE-IIIc telescope restoration project.