About Me
Hello! My name is Aiden Zelakiewicz and I’m an Astronomy PhD student at Cornell University. I recieved my B.S. from the Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics at The Ohio State University.
Raised in Albany, living in Milwaukee, studying in Columbus, and dreaming of San Francisco. In my spare time I enjoy landscape photography, playing video games, watching anime, and critiquing various local and campus coffee shops. I also enjoy going to local concerts and music festivals with my friends.
Education
I am a PhD student at the Cornell University Department of Astronomy since the Fall of 2023. Along with my advisors Lisa Kaltenegger and Dmitry Savransky, I work to model exoplanet atmosphere and surface retrievals using the Habitable Worlds Observatory. I received my B.S. in Astronomy & Astrophysics at The Ohio State University in the Spring of 2023. Since the Summer of 2021, I conducted research within OSU’s Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics. This research has been working on creating near infrared extinction maps towards the Galactic Center, with a paper being prepared for publication. I’ve been on the Dean’s List every semester since attending the university and was also awarded the Ann Slusher Tuttle Scholarship and L. Earl Slusher Scholarship!
During the Summer of 2022 I interned at the UC Berkeley SETI Research Center working on machine learning models. I built a deep neural network called Conditional Bi-Directional Generative Adversarial Networks (cBiGANS). These models are meant to create synthetic radio waterfall data to help it further find potential ETI signals. For more in-depth details on the project, you can read about it here.
Recently I have found a cross section of astronomy I really enjoy and am passionate about. The hope is to study exoplanets or other phenomenon from a machine learning angle to help automate and streamline our ability to process an ever-increasing amount of information. I’ve found that I really enjoy the coding side of research and the way machine learning/neural networks operate fascinate me.
Hobbies
As you may have noticed from the tab on the sidebar, but I love photography. Ever since I got my hands on my friend’s camera on a school trip in 2017 I had an itch to take photos. I got my first camera (the one I still use) shortly after and have been snapping photos wherever I go since. To date I have taken over 3,000 photos and even won a competition for one I submitted! If you’re curious about my photography, visit the photography page to see some of my work.