My research interests include gravitational dynamics, chaos, black holes, star clusters, single and binary star evolution, star formation, and compact objects. I analyze and compare simulated and observational data, often in the realm of Big Data.

As described in more detail in my CV, over the past 4 years alone, I have supervised or co-supervised 25 students (see my CV for a list), most of whom I have published with as co-authors in one of the primary peer-reviewed astronomy journals (MNRAS, ApJ). I have taught a variety of astrophysics and physics courses over the years, most recently at the graduate level at the Universidad de Concepcion. Using the textbook I have co-written, I designed a graduate course on Celestial Mechanics that teaches students how to get into peer-review research. I have supervised over 10 undergraduate students. These students were primarily funded through the NSF REU Program, the AstroCom Program at the City University of New York and the NASA New York Space Grant Community College Partnership. These last two programs aim to provide research experience to under-represented minorities in the sciences early on in their careers and to help them finish their degree in the sciences. A subset of the undergraduates I have supervised were funded by the University of Chicago. We were in the process of developing a summer exchange program with your undergraduate students, but have had to put this venture on hold due to the covid outbreak.

At the Universidad de Concepcion, I currently have 6 students I am supervising, including two undergraduate thesis students, three Master's students and one Fulbright student. My first undergraduate thesis student has now completed his project and the paper has been accepted to a high-quality peer-review astronomy journal. He will now continue with me for his PhD. I have also co-supervised 5 students over the last two years, all of whom have now published their papers in high-quality peer-review astronomy journals.

As indicated in my CV, nearly every student I have supervised over the last ten years has published their work in high-quality peer-review level astronomy journals. For my Fondecyt Iniciacion Project #11180005, we are currently finishing the final paper for this project, and will hopefully submit it to a peer-review astronomy journal within the next month or so. More recently, I have been involved in writing an undergraduate textbook called “Moving Planets Around” as one of the lead authors, now in press with MIT University Press, which teaches students how to write computer simulations to evolve planetary systems and use them to conduct publishable scientific research with limited resources. The students learn how to program in Python and C++, develop a dynamic software environment and even design, conduct and complete novel research projects publishable in peer-reviewed journals. Viraj Manwadkar, a University of Chicago undergraduate student, was the first to use this resource to publish his own first-author paper on the three-body problem (Manwadkar, Trani & Leigh 2020, 497, 3694).