Robert Vincent Gramillano

302 W. Locust St. Apt 2 Urbana, IL 61801 | Tel: +1 (708) 400-2020 | Email: rvgramillano@yahoo.com

Summary of Qualifications:

* Passionate about analyzing large data sets and making meaningful conclusions with recommendations
* Able to think critically about various scenarios involving abstract data sets, such as in the physical sciences
* Experience manipulating large, astronomical data sets with high-performance computing techniques
* Experience writing publishable scientific documents
* Demonstrated skill in managing change and maintaining flexibility in a variety of challenging environments
* Ability to work in diverse teams and to communicate well with others
* Talented tutor with expertise in physics and calculus
Relevant Work Experience:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Full-time Research Assistant Spring 2016 – Present

Working in Professor Jeff Filippini’s cosmology group in the physics department analyzing data taken from the
sub-orbital, cosmic microwave background (CMB) telescope SPIDER (http://jpf.web.engr.illinois.edu/).

• Characterized cosmic ray events seen by the SPIDER detectors.

• Used 3-parameter optimal filter techniques to estimate cosmic ray energy, analyzed fall time of cosmic
ray pulses, quantified comic ray cross talk between detectors, computed live time for cosmic ray hits in
the SPIDER experiment, and created cosmic ray rate energy spectra among other research goals.
• Manipulated, cleaned and effectively visualized large sets of unstructured, time-ordered data generated
by multi-channel electronics (MCE) machines.
• Gained experience with the extract, transform, load (ETL) process in a research context.
• Gained experience with a variety of modeling and statistical techniques, such as multivariate regression,
correlation, and distributions, in Python with numpy, scipy, and pandas to analyze cosmic ray response
in the SPIDER instrument and provide insights.
• Resulted in improved knowledge of SPIDER’s response to cosmic rays, which will be used to limit the
effect of cosmic ray contamination for future CMB telescopes. Drafting toward a future publication with
the SPIDER collaboration. (First submitted publication, section 3.3:
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1711.10596.pdf)

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Part-time Researcher Spring 2017 – Present

• Working with Matias Carrasco Kind on large-scale, dark-matter-only cosmological simulations.

• Identified dark-matter halos found in the simulations using various techniques such as FOF and HOP,
computed halo mass functions, and created animations visualizing large-scale structure.
• Analyzed massive sets of simulation data with Python pandas, scipy, and numpy modules.
• Gained experience with cluster computing techniques to process large data sets.
 • Co-wrote an accepted proposal for 50,000 node-hours (with an estimated value of $31,000) on NCSA’s
Blue Waters resource for a cosmological simulation that will run from 13.7 billion years in the past to 70
billion years in the future with 8003 particles.

National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) Undergraduate Researcher Summer 2015

• Helped develop software that allows researchers to obtain images from the Dark Energy Survey (DES)
observed region.
• Experience working with large online databases and data visualization.
• Gained useful skills in multi-threaded design and parallel computing.
• This same software is used in a DES web applet that generates images from the survey given a position
in the region.

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Undergraduate Researcher Fall 2014 – Spring 2016

• Worked with Professor Joaquin Vieira’s observational cosmology group in the astronomy department at
UIUC (http://obscos.astro.illinois.edu/).
• Research focused on identifying gravitationally lensed sources by cross matching multi-wavelength data
from DES, the South Pole Telescope (SPT) and the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and
applying a variety of cuts.
• Gained experience with processing large, astronomical surveys with Python. Wrote complex scripts for
cross matching positions of galaxies from different astronomical catalogs.
• Wrote a senior thesis, made a poster and presented this research during the Fall 2015 semester, which
resulted in co-authorship of a journal article (Nord, B., Buckley-Geer, E., Lin, H., et al. 2016, ApJ, 827,
51).

Education:

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Graduated – May 2016

Bachelor of Science in physics and astronomy, both with distinction. Edmund James Scholar
Overall GPA: 3.70

Homewood-Flossmoor High School - Graduated with Honors, (Ranked 12th out of 750). June 2013
Distinguished Scholar Award 2011-2013 | National AP Scholar 2013 | Outstanding Senior in Science 2013

Computer Skills:

Proficiency in Python; research done and developed significant skills in the Linux command line, pandas,
numpy, matplotlib and other data analysis packages

Experience with Microsoft Office packages, i.e., MS Word, Excel, Power point

Frequent exposure to various other technologies for data analysis and cluster computing (i.e., SQL, qsub) and
some exposure to machine learning (i.e., keano, TensorFlow, scikit-learn) and Big Data (i.e., Hadoop, Spark)
technologies.
 Relevant work projects:

Tutor - Effectively tutoring multiple undergraduate students in math and physics, which resulted in successful
completion of their courses and improved my ability and confidence in explaining a variety of technical
concepts. Over 100 hours of tutoring experience. (September 2016 – present)

Organizations:

University of Illinois Astronomical Society Vice President, 2015 Member since 2013
Organizing events and training members to use the historic 10 ft telescope (key holder).
Managing monthly open houses for the public which attract up to hundreds of visitors