I'm Alex, Lead Researcher in Astrophysics at SPb State University

My research interests lie in Extragalactic Astronomy and Machine Learning.
Worked as a Data Scientist top-rated freelancer for 5+ years part-time and did research in Astrophysics, where I have a PhD. Skilled in statistical analysis, machine learning, data visualization, predictive modeling, data mining, data engineering, etc. Have experience in working under minimal supervision as well as collaborating with a team.

PROJECTS

Major

2020 – 2021

Deep Learning search for galaxies, where I completely trained and applied the CNN model that search for galaxies with some peculiarities in their center,  which increased the number of such objects known from several 100s to almost 2000, details in the paper in Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

2016 – 2020

Reinforcement Learning Trader, Upwork project where I implemented Q-learning approach for crypto trading. The full automatic ML-pipeline was built using PGPortfolio, various backtrading packages, Apache Kafka and mlrun tools. Models automatically update and trade with some small portfolios in Binance.

2014

Scientific Tools in Pycharm, I implemented some tools for better experience with PyCharm IDE, including Data View tool and some console-related improvements.

2013

Eclipse plugin for YouTrack, written from scratch by myself in JetBrains using Java.

2012 – 2013

GoodsReview, diploma project for NLP-based application for sentiment extraction from user reviews. I was a main researcher in the project with mentors from Yandex and HP Labs and build the ML classifier with decent results and wrote a research paper.

Pet projects

link Systembolaget Unusual Bottles Classification
link Romeo and Juliet Lingvoarcheology
link Saint-Petersburg Metro Isodistances
link Vk.com Naive Feed attention maximization model
link Steam games sizes vs HDD capacity comparison
link Saint-Petersburg Metro Stations Closures in 2017/2018
link 'Newochem' group voting system analysis (in Russian)
link Earth Population longitude/latitude profiles Visualization
link Apply Microsoft Cognitive Serices Emotion API for emotions detection on VK photos.
link Analyzing 'Friends' subtitles
link Check first 50 000 000 Primes Last Digit Sequence Frequencies

PUBLICATIONS

First author

  • B/PS bulges in DESI Legacy edge-on galaxies - I. Sample building (2022)

  • An analysis of methods for determining corotation radii in galaxies (2022)

  • Fractal dimension of optical cirrus in Stripe82 (2021)

  • Gravitational instability and star formation in NGC 628 (2018)

  • Two-component gravitational instability in spiral galaxies (2018)

  • Reconstructing the velocity dispersion profiles from the line-of-sight kinematic data in disc galaxies (2017)


    • Co-author

  • The distribution of dust in edge-on galaxies: I. The global structure (2022)

  • The edge-on Galaxies in the Pan-STARRS survey (EGIPS) (2022)

  • The properties of Galactic globular clusters from Gaia EDR3 and other data compared with theoretical isochrones (2022)

  • Interstellar extinction at high Galactic latitudes across the whole dust layer in the Galaxy (2022)

  • Dust discs in edge-on galaxies: case of NGC 4437 (2022)

  • Studying the characteristics of spiral galaxies (2022)

  • Catalog of edge-on galaxies using the Pan-STARRS1 survey data (2022)

  • Investigation of Galactic cirri based on SDSS Stripe 82 images (2022)

  • Isochrone fitting of Galactic globular clusters - III. NGC 288, NGC 362, and NGC 6218 (M12) (2021)

  • Investigation of the parameters of spiral pattern in galaxies: the arm width (2020)

  • A multiwavelength study of spiral structure in galaxies. I. General characteristics in the optical (2020)

  • A coupling pair of dwarfs in Lynx (2013)

  • Extracting product features from reviews with the use of internet statistics (2013) 

    • ABOUT ME

    Interested in latest discoveries in Physics, Biology and Archeology, hiking and kayaking, electronic and classical music, pareidolia painting, urban tourism.

    SCIENTIFIC INTERESTS

    Galaxies structure, formation and evolution. Origin and properties of spiral arms in galaxies, pattern speed of spiral structure and bar, methods of corotation radii determination. Star formation properties of galaxies and their connection to the stability of gaseous and stellar discs. Gravitational instability in galaxies. Kinematical analysis of galaxy features, stellar velocity ellipsoid. Dust in galaxies. Properties of Boxy/Peanut/X-shaped bulges in galaxies. Surveys and catalogs of extragalactic objects. Application of Machine Learning methods in Astrophysics.

    TECHNICAL SKILLS

    Python (Numpy, Scipy, Pandas, Matplotlib, Astropy, Plotly), Jupyter ecosystem, PyCharm & DataSpell IDEs, bash, git, TensorFlow, Matlab, Unix/Linux, touch Fortran/C++/Java/R/Julia, Apache Kafka, Airflow, Docker, scikit-learn, catboost, XGBoost, mlrun, Catalyst/backtrader projects.

    More information in my CV .