My Research
Time-Domain Explosive Transients studies and identification & classification methods in the era of big data.
In the early 1990’s, transient science began a dramatic revolution with the confluence of robotic telescopes, technologically mature CCD’s, and cheapening computing power. These combined forces fueled an orders of magnitude increase in the number of astronomical transients observed, and helped revolutionize our understanding of the variable universe. Today, we are on the cusp of the culmination of these trends – with multi-messenger telescopes triggering wide field searches for EM counterparts, and these wide field telescopes capturing terabytes of data a night with potentially hundreds of newly discovered uncharacterized transients - the challenge is becoming finding the ‘interesting’ transient and getting the right telescopes, and the right observations, on them. My primary research interests revolve around using these burgeoning multi-wavelength observations of astronomical transients to understand the progenitors, and oftentimes-extreme physics, that drive them.
Currently Serving as the Director of the TESS Science Support Center, A member of the NASA ACROSS Pilot Project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, and as a Visiting Assistant Research Scientist at the University of Maryland, College Park.
Contact
Dr. Tyler A Pritchard
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
University of Maryland College Park
Washington, D.C.