Curriculum Vitae

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Education

}2018 – 2024PhD in Astronomy & Astrophysics, University of Toronto
}2014 – 2018B.S. in Mathematical Physics and Astronomy, Case Western Reserve University

Select Professional Appointments

}2024 – 2027Postdoctoral Associate, MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research
}2021 –Coordinator & Core Developer, Astropy

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Select Publications

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}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
}2026Reconstructing Galactic Gravitational Potentials from Stellar Kinematics with Physics-Informed Neural Networks — C. Myers†, N. Starkman, L. Necib. Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Societysubmitted
}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 Journalaccepted
}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

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Select Fellowships & Awards

}2025AAS Lancelot M. Berkeley–New York Community Trust Prize — to the Astropy Collaboration
}2024Brinson Prize Fellowship
}2020 – 2023NSERC - CGS D
}2018 – 2024University of Toronto Graduate Fellowship

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Select Software

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potamides
Relative likelihood of a halo’s y-axis flattening, q₂, from a Potamides tutorial: a flat plateau from about 0.7 to 1.55 that contains the true value, q₂ = 1, falling to zero on either side.

co-lead developer

Constrain gravitational potentials from stellar stream curvature

A JAX package that fits stream tracks with splines and compares their curvature directly to a potential's accelerations. Co-led with Sirui Wu.

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galax
The galax logo, the GalacticDynamics mark: a painted spiral galaxy with a glowing core on a dark disk, circled by a dark ring, between a teal < and a purple > code bracket.

lead developer

Galactic dynamics in JAX

Orbit integration, potentials and stream generation — GPU-accelerated and fully differentiable.

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coordinax
The coordinax logo: a ruler crossed with a green arrow on a blue square.

lead developer

Coordinates in JAX

Vectors, frames and transformations — differentiable, and unit-aware via unxt.

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unxt
The unxt logo: a ruler crossed with a green pencil on a blue square.

lead developer

Units in JAX

Unit-aware quantities that survive jit, grad and vmap.

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