Aaron is an expert in data visualization and analysis and works with researchers across Northwestern to develop cutting-edge and beautiful visual representations of their data. Aaron has won multiple awards for scientific images, his scientific illustrations have been featured in press releases on major news networks, and he has created informative figures for high-impact scientific journals. He has contributed to and presented his visualizations in multiple shows at the Adler Planetarium (Chicago) and the Hayden Planetarium (New York).
One of Aaron's recent large projects is Firefly, a custom-built, cross-discipline, flexible visualization platform that allows users to interactively explore and manipulate multi-dimensional datasets with millions of observations, all from within a web browser. Aaron also recently developed the CHiMaD System Design Toolbox, used by members of Northwestern's Center for Hierarchical Materials Design (CHiMaD) and other materials scientists to collaboratively generate, visualize, and discuss material design. More of Aaron's visualization products are on his website and YouTube Channel. Aaron also teaches workshops for Northwestern researchers on data visualization best practices and techniques, including tutorials on a wide variety of 2D and 3D visualization applications. Materials for these workshops can be found on Aaron's GitHub page.
Aaron is also a research faculty member at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Astrophysics (CIERA) and has worked in CIERA since 2010. In CIERA, Aaron leads a research group studying the lives and deaths of stars and planets. Since 2015, he is also the PI and site director for CIERA's Research Experiences for Undergraduate Students (REU) program, which brings a talented and diverse group of undergraduate students from across the country to Northwestern each summer to perform research with CIERA faculty.