Benjamin Dodge

I am a PhD Candidate in Physics at Stanford University, where I work on 3d mapping of the interstellar medium, advised by Susan Clark. The big-picture goal is to infer fields like density, velocity, and temperature as a function of x, y, and z in our Galaxy. Right now I’m excited about what we can do with sodium absorption, both today and with the upcoming Via survey. I’m also working on an ISM-oriented reduction of SPHEREx data.

Computational methods are a critical enabler of this science. I am particularly interested in scalable Gaussian processes, high-dimensional Bayesian inference, and differentiable, GPU-accelerated code. I am a big fan of JAX, or I will be once they have a stable API for custom primitives. We have a great opportunity to take advantage of the technologies behind AI in pursuit of our scientific goals.

Before graduate school I received a B.A. in Physics from Princeton University, where I worked with Mariangela Lisanti on dark matter and galaxy dynamics, topics which are still dear to my heart. I also lived for a year in Yilan, Taiwan as an Fulbright ETA.