Erik Tollerud

Dr. Erik Tollerud is an Associate Astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, MD, USA. He researches Near-Field Cosmology, which is essentially a short way to say he studies the smallest galaxies to understand how the building blocks of our universe form and what dark matter is. He is also the Project Scientist of the Data Science Mission Office there, which really means the engineers think he's a scientist while the scientists think he's an engineer. He is also a founder and coordinator of the Astropy Project, the core library for astronomy in Python, and is an avid advocate of open development of scientific software. He is also a big fan of blue drinks.