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.

Computational Astronomer and opinion haver trying to search for alien life outside of Ithaca, New York. In my spare time I enjoy photography, playing video games, playing guitar, rock climbing, 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 Ph.D. student at the Cornell University Department of Astronomy since the Fall of 2023. I work with Professors Lisa Kaltenegger and Dmitry Savransky to model exoplanet atmosphere and surface retrievals using the Habitable Worlds Observatory. I combine thorough models of HWO noise sources with high resolution terrestrial planet reflection spectra to mimick the high level data products we may expect to analyze after launch. In addition to this work, I also work implementing new features to the exoplanet mission simulation code EXOSIMS.

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.

Hobbies

As you may have noticed from the tab on the sidebar, I love photography. 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.

I also play a lot of guitar in my free time. My rig currently consists of an Ibanez QX52 and Schecter Demon 7 routed into a Boss Katana MK2.