1P — Nathaniel Starkman

Curriculum Vitae

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1P 1P 2P NP All

Education

}2018 – 2024PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto

}2014 – 2018B.S. in Mathematical Physics and Astronomy, Case Western Reserve University

Professional Appointments

}2024 – 2027Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research

}2021 –Coordinator (2025 – 2028), Strategic Planner (2025 – 2026) & Core Developer, Astropy

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Grants & Fellowships

}2026JWST GO 10246: Exploring the Accretion History and Halo of Giant Elliptical Cen A with Resolved Stars, Co-I

}2024Brinson Prize Fellowship, Postdoctoral Fellow, Brinson Foundation — USD 360,000

}2020 – 2023NSERC - CGS D, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada — CAD 105,000

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Awards

}2024ASA Astrostatistics Interest Group Student Paper Competition, FinalistTo Nathaniel Starkman

}2023IOP Publishing Top Cited Paper Award, North AmericaTo the Astropy Collaboration

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Publications

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}2026Potamides: Mapping Dark Matter Halo Shapes from Stellar Stream Tracks in the Local Universe — S. Wu^‡, N. Starkman, S. Pearson, J. Nibauer, et al. The Astrophysical Journal 1010, 120

}2026When Streams Curve Away: a Test of Dark Matter from Extragalactic Stellar Stream Populations — N. Starkman, J. Nibauer, S. Pearson, S. Wu^‡, et al. The Astrophysical Journalsubmitted

}2026Euclid Quick Data Release (Q1): The geometry of dark matter halos from extragalactic streams — N. Starkman, J. Nibauer, S. Pearson, S. Wu^‡, et al. Astronomy & Astrophysicssubmitted

}2025Stream Members Only: Data-Driven Characterization of Stellar Streams with Mixture Density Networks — N. Starkman, J. Nibauer, J. Bovy, J. Webb, et al. The Astrophysical Journal 980, 253

}2023On the fast track: Rapid construction of stellar stream paths — N. Starkman, J. Bovy, J. Webb, D. Calvetti, et al. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 522, 5022–5036

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Software Development

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Astropy

Core developer · Coordination Committee · Strategic Planning

Astronomy in Python

The community core package for astronomy in Python. The collaboration received the 2025 AAS Lancelot M. Berkeley Prize, a 2023 IOP Publishing Top Cited Paper Award and the 2022 ADASS software prize.

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galax

lead developer

Galactic dynamics in JAX

Galactic dynamics in JAX: gravitational potentials, orbit integration, mock stellar streams, and action-angle coordinates, all differentiable and GPU-ready.

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coordinax

lead developer

Coordinates in JAX

Coordinates in JAX: points, vectors, and reference frames, with differentiable, unit-aware transformations between coordinate systems.

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unxt

lead developer

Units in JAX

Unit-aware computing in JAX, with a Quantity familiar to astropy.units users that passes through jit, vmap, grad, and existing JAX code.

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potamides

co-lead developer

Constrain gravitational potentials from stellar stream curvature

Infers galaxy mass distributions from the projected shapes of stellar streams, fitting their tracks with splines and comparing the tracks' curvature to a potential's accelerations.

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phasecurvefit

lead developer

Paths through phase space

Orders samples along a curve in phase space and fits a smooth track through them, using velocities as well as positions so curves that cross or fold back stay on the right strand.

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Students Advised & Mentored

}2025 – 2026Amir Abdulgadir (Howard)

}2024 – 2026Charlotte Myers (MIT) with Prof. Lina Necib (MIT)

}2024 – 2026Sirui Wu (PhD student of Sarah Pearson, Copenhagen)

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