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Achievements

Achievement: QuickdrawAchievement: Pair ExtraordinaireAchievement: YOLOAchievement: Pull Sharkx2Achievement: Arctic Code Vault Contributor

Achievements

Achievement: QuickdrawAchievement: Pair ExtraordinaireAchievement: YOLOAchievement: Pull Sharkx2Achievement: Arctic Code Vault Contributor

Organizations

@KeckObservatory @LUVS-Space-Telescopes

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jacotay7/README.md

Welcome to My GitHub Profile! 🌌

Hello! I'm Jacob, a software engineer with a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysics from the University of Toronto (2024). My thesis work was in the field of adaptive optics (AO), where I mainly focussed on real-time control. For my thesis, I also worked on Adaptive Secondary Mirror (ASM) calibration techniques, AI-enhanced control for AO, infrared camera characterization (SAPHIRA), and AO bench design.

I work as the AO Software Engineer at the W. M. Keck Observatory on the big island of Hawaii, a role I've held since 2025. My position at Keck is a unique combination of software engineering and AO development. I am a member of both departments and have been learning from both.

About My Work

I lead the development of pyRTC, an open-source project I started during my PhD. pyRTC focuses on delivering high-performance real-time control using only Python. PyRTC aims to combine performance with usability and is particularly suited for advanced control methods, including AI-enhanced controllers.

I'm looking for collaborators interested in contributing to this project. If you're passionate about open-source software and want to be part of the pyRTC community, I'd love to hear from you.

Currently, I am working on several Keck AO development projects, including HAKA, KAPA, KASM, and the AO refurbishment project. As part of these projects, I am developing tools for tomographic reconstruction, visualizations, software infrastructure and Keck simulations.

Other Projects

I am also the lead developer for the veta project. veta is an open-source project for scoring the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS). The LEAS is a multi-lingual psychiatric test designed to gauge emotional awareness, which has been associated with a broad range of clinical psychiatric disorders. veta has been featured in several peer-reviewed publications in medical journals, several of which can be found linked on my ORCID profile.

Let's Connect

I'm always open to collaboration opportunities. Whether you're an experienced developer or new to the field, there's a place for you in the pyRTC project.

Feel free to contact me at jtaylor@keck.hawaii.edu. Looking forward to connecting!

Thanks for reading!

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  1. pyRTC pyRTC Public

    An object-oriented adaptive optics real-time control software written in Python. The goal is to be a universal and simple to use python package while maintaining enough real-time performance to be …

    Python 6 1

  2. veta veta Public

    A text-based emotion assessment tool called VETA (Verbal Emotion in Text Assessment). VETA was written to electronically score LEAS (Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale) surveys.

    Python