Gerald Ruch

I'm interested in exploring the boundary between computer science and the physical sciences. In particular, how can astronomers and physicists take advantage of computer science techniques such as artificial intelligence, data mining, computer vision, and game theory. My current research involves using artificial neural networks and principal component analysis to analyze spectra of proto-planetary disks, the likely sites of planetary formation. These techniques help me to robustly analyze large amounts of data, discover interesting patterns in the data, and compare and contrast competing physical models.