2026-11-02 –, Seminar Room 2
The TOLIMAN space telescope is a low-cost mission to detect exoplanets via astrometry, with a focus on the Alpha Centauri binary system, our nearest-neighbor star system. The data processing pipeline will be deployed on the Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to best cater to the international collaboration. The pipeline utilizes a persistent GCP Virtual Machine (VM) running the Dagster orchestration software. Each data processing task is packaged as a Docker image and executed as an ephemeral Cloud Run job, with processed data stored in a GCP bucket and a PostgreSQL database hosted on Google Cloud SQL. The prototype, our first data pipeline on Google Cloud, was built by leveraging the Claude Code agentic coding tool, which facilitated rapid learning of the necessary tools. A streamlined development cycle enabled us to investigate, implement, and test in fast succession, resulting in a working pipeline within three weeks of initial conceptualization. We found Claude Code to be immensely useful but could result in unnecessary complexity and software bloat without proper human supervision. We will discuss our observations and recommendations for using Claude Code for scientific software engineering.
Dr. Jeffrey Smith is Chair of Data Science at the SETI Institute and develops data processing pipelines and modeling tools for NASA and SETI Institute projects. Jeff has been Principal Investigator on several NASA Cooperative Agreements relating to the design, development and deployment of science data processing pipelines and analysis algorithms and was a principal developer of data processing algorithms for both the Kepler and TESS missions. Jeff has developed a multi-stage meteor detection and characterization pipeline using Earth-imaging instruments including the GOES weather satellites. As technical lead for the SSAIL program, Jeff coordinates scientists, projects and activities, and is responsible for integrating novel data science methods into SETI Institute research. In his free time, Jeff enjoys activities not related to his job, such as travel, hiking, exploring winding mountain roads, and building wooden models.