Ali Ahmad Khostovan

Ali Ahmad Khostovan

Extragalactic Astrophysicist

I am from South San Francisco, CA and earned my degrees from the University of California, Irvine (Bachelors in Physics) and University of California, Riverside (Masters and PhD in Physics). I was also a NESSF PhD fellow my last 2 years at UC Riverside and went on to be a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center as my first postdoc position. I am currently a Postdoctoral Research Associate at RIT. My work primarily focuses on studying galaxy evolution, especially extreme emission line galaxies, using narrowband surveys, spectroscopic follow-ups, and broadband color excess. I am interested in studying how star formation activity occured in galaxies, what factors influenced said activity, and map out the evolutionary path to present-day galaxies. My work also involves creating and managing the COSMOS spectroscopic archive and spec-\(z\) compilation. Below is a brief version of my full CV which can be downloaded by clicking the “Full CV” button.

Full CV
Location
Laboratory for Multiwavelength Astrophysics, School of Physics & Astronomy, Rochester Institute of Technology, New York, United States
Phone
(415) 308-7465
Website
https://akhostov.github.io
GitHub
akhostov
LinkedIn
Ali Ahmad Khostovan

Experience

– present

Postdoctoral Research Associate at Rochester Institute of Technology

I am leading several projects under the supervision of Jeyhan Kartaltepe involving the development of a large COSMOS spectroscopic archive.

Highlights

  • Led development of a large archive of all spectroscopic data taken within COSMOS
  • Contributed to the development of Redshift Wrangler, a citizen science program designed for users to help in analyzing reduced data from the COSMOS Spectroscopic Archive.
  • Main lead on creating and maintaining the COSMOS spec-z compilation of published redshifts (separate from above mentioned archive).
  • Leading PI on 2 spectroscopic follow-up programs with Keck and Gemini
  • Led studies on Extreme Emission Line Galaxies with JWST/NIRcam imaging and archival spectra

–

NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center

I led several projects under the supervision of Sangeeta Malhotra and James Rhoads on investigating emission line galaxies with large narrowband surveys. The pivotal moment of this position was creating a forward modeling approach in constraining the intrinsic equivalent width distributions of galaxy populations and highlighting how this approach can be used to infer the relative contribution of high EW emitters to total cosmic star formation activity at any constrained redshift.

Highlights

  • Led studies on emission line galaxies selected from the narrowband LAGER survey
  • Worked on creating clean & reliable samples of Hα, [Oiii], and [Oii] emitters
  • Used statistical modeling (e.g., MCMC) to investigate luminosity functions of samples
  • Developed a statistical, forward modeling approach to study the intrinsic equivalent widths of star-forming galaxies
  • Developed a method predicting number count predictions for *Roman* and *Euclid* based on constraints from stellar mass functions and intrinsic Hα equivalent width evolution

–

NASA Earth & Space Sciences PhD Fellow (NESSF) at University of California, Riverside

I led projects that made up the core of my PhD thesis studying emission line galaxies using wide narrowband and intermediate-band surveys targeting Hα, [OIII], [OII], and Lyα emitters from \(z \sim 0.4\) to \(\sim 6\).

Highlights

  • Led studies on emission line galaxies selected via several narrowband surveys
  • Investigated statistical properties of star-forming galaxies up to z ∼ 6
  • Used machine learning approaches to study galaxy-galaxy clustering and galaxy-halo connection

Education

–

PhD in Physics from University of California, Riverside

Courses

  • Advisers: Bahram Mobasher (UCR) and David Sobral (Univ. of Lisbon; later Lancaster Univ.)
  • Thesis: The Evolution of Star-Forming Galaxies with the Largest Narrowband Surveys

–

Masters of Science in Physics from University of California, Riverside

–

Bachelors of Science in Physics from University of California, Irvine

Courses

  • Adviser: Asantha Cooray
  • Did four years of undergraduate research as part of the Cooray Group
  • Honors Thesis: Evolution of Submillimeter Galaxies

Languages

English
Fluency: Native speaker
Farsi
Fluency: Native speaker

Skills

Programming
Level:
Keywords:
  • Python
  • IDL
  • Shell Scripting
  • C
  • SQL
Catalog & Data Visualization Tools
Level:
Keywords:
  • DS9
  • TopCat
  • SpecPro
Data Reduction
Level:
Keywords:
  • Pypeit (extensive)
  • MOSFIRE DRP
  • FIBRE-pac
  • SExtractor
  • IRAF/PyRAF
Photo-z Tools
Level:
Keywords:
  • LePhare
  • EaZY
SED & Line Tools
Level:
Keywords:
  • Cigale
  • Prospector
  • Bagpipes
  • Magphys
  • PyQSOFit
Data Experience
Level:
Keywords:
  • Extensive experience anallyzing optical & near-IR spectroscopic data
Machine Learning
Level:
Keywords:
  • KDTree
  • Clustering
  • Nearest Neighbors
Python Packages
Level:
Keywords:
  • astropy
  • numpy
  • scipy
  • scikit-learn
  • astroML
  • matplotlib
Statistical Analysis
Level:
Keywords:
  • MCMC
  • Metropolis-Hastings
  • Bootstrapping
  • Bayesian Statistics
  • MLE
  • Hypothesis Testing
Technologies/Framework
Level:
Keywords:
  • Mac OSX
  • Windows
  • Linux
  • GitHub
  • Jeykll

Interests

Music
Keywords:
  • Classical Iranian
  • Jazz
Hiking
Keywords:
  • Mt Baldy
  • Shenandoah
  • Great Falls Trail
Aviation
Keywords:
  • Flying (PPL one day)
  • Plane Spotting