Jamila Taaki

Hello,

I'm a Schmidt postdoctoral fellow at the Michigan Institute for Data & AI in Society (University of Michigan) where I'm mentored by Professor Lia Corrales (Astronomy) and Professor Alfred Hero (EECS). I completed my PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign advised by Professor Farzad Kamalabadi (ECE) and Professor Athol Kemball (Astronomy).

Before joining Illinois, I completed an M.sc. in Astrophysics at Royal Holloway University of London.

My research interests are focused on statistical inference and computational methods for transit photometry and direct-imaging.

Publications

(In submission to AJ) A Search for Exoplanet Candidates in TESS Short Cadence Lightcurves with Bayesian Detection: Taaki, Kemball, Kamalabadi (2024).

Robust Detrending of Spatially Correlated Systematics in Kepler Light Curves Using Low-Rank Methods: Taaki, Kemball, Kamalabadi. The Astronomical Journal (2024).

Bayesian Methods for Joint Exoplanet Transit Detection and Systematic Noise Characterization: Taaki, Kamalabadi, Kemball. The Astronomical Journal (2020).

Projects/Software

PyStarshade : a Python library for optical simulation of direct exoplanet imaging with an occulter (starshade), from star-planet source field to CCD. PyStarshade affords high-resolution simulation for arbitrary source fields based on efficient spectral sampling methods.

We were awarded a 250k Bluewaters allocation for it's final year of operations. The allocation was used to perform a search for exoplanets in years 1-3 of TESS short cadence data. This search has produced a number of exoplanet candidated listed on the EXOFOP database.

Enjoy an exoplanet a day: twitter bot in collab. with Evan Widloski.

Bayesian transit detection requires full-rank covariance models, see how to efficiently compute transit detection tests with CUDA demo here .

Past Research Work

Open University Mars Climate Lab, supervised by Professor Stephen Lewis. Internship and temporary researcher (2015): I produced simulated entry landing and descent profiles of vehicles landing on the Mars surface under a variety of climate conditions. I also looked at seasonal ice-cap variation using Martian climate simulations.

Contact, Other

Email: xiaziyna@gmail.com, jtaaki2@illinois.edu

CV: PDF