Benjamin Thorne

Experience

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  University of Oxford, Department of Physics

  Oct 2015 - Jun 2019

  Graduate Student Researcher
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  The University of Tokyo

  Aug 2016 - Sept 2017

  Graduate Student Researcher

  I was the inaugural Kavli IPMU - University of Oxford Fellow in astrophysics. This fellowship allows for a DPhil student in astrophysics at Oxford to spend a year or more at the IPMU, conducting their research under the supervision of a local professor. I worked with Professor Nobuhiko Katayama.My work at IPMU was mainly analytical. I derived theoretical predictions for astrophysical observables in a parity-violating cosmological model, and forecasted the constraining power of the LISA laser interferometer, and LiteBIRD satellites for such a model. Show less

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  Princeton University

  Sept 2017 - Jul 2019

  Graduate Student Researcher

  At Princeton I was advised by Professor Jo Dunkley, and worked on several research projects related to analysis of astronomical datasets:• Developed widely used Python package, pysm, which simulates cosmological data. This software now underpins Galactic and extragalactic sky simulations in most cosmic microwave background experiments. • Developed Bayesian pixel-fitting Python code to be applied to multifrequency cosmic microwave background datasets, and applied it to forecast the impact of spurious signals from foreground contamination on science results from the upcoming Simons Observatory. Show less

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  University of California, Davis

  Jul 2019 - Dec 2022

  Postdoctoral Scholar

  • Developed key software pipeline for analysis of CMB data collected with the South Pole Telescope and BICEP / Keck array. This pipeline implements MCMC sampling of a large hierarchical Bayesian model for CMB images, and makes use of hardware acceleration and advanced statistical techniques. • Developed machine learning models of non-Gaussian foreground fields. Built a variational autoencoder model of Galactic emission for use in Bayesian inverse tasks, and developed new non-Gaussian analytical models.• Co-developed v3.0 of the PySM Python package. This included targeted development for performance in HPC environments, as well as the implementation of new models supporting. Show less

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  Berkeley Lab

  Apr 2023 - Oct 2023

  Machine Learning Engineer
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  Atomic Industries

  Oct 2023 - now

  Senior Machine Learning Engineer