John Moustakas

Professor of Physics & Astronomy, Siena University

Welcome! I am a Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at Siena University, where I serve as the 4+1 Engineering Co-Coordinator and on the Data Science Faculty Steering Committee.

My research is in observational cosmology and galaxy evolution. I use the largest spectroscopic and imaging surveys ever undertaken to understand how galaxies form and evolve in a universe dominated by dark matter, and to measure the properties of dark energy, the mysterious phenomenon causing the expansion of the universe to accelerate.

I am a longtime member of the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration and a core team member of the DESI Legacy Imaging Surveys, and I lead several open-source software and data projects, including the Siena Galaxy Atlas and FastSpecFit.

Much of my work relies on the computational and statistical methods of data science, which Siena undergraduates are an essential part of; see my research group.

I teach a wide range of courses, from introductory physics to upper-level physics and astrophysics and data science, and I strive to build every class around the teaching methods that physics education research has shown to work best.

If you would like to know more, please do not hesitate to get in touch!