Michelle Ntampaka

Michelle Mntampaka is a Data Scientist and Assistant Astronomer at Space Telescope Science Institute. Her research develops new ways to interpret observations of galaxy clusters and other large scale structures. She uses machine learning and statistics to tease out complicated patterns in the data that are inaccessible through more traditional means. Her physics Ph.D. – Cosmology with Galaxy Cluster Dynamics Using Machine Learning and Forward Modeling – is from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA.

A former teacher, Michelle puts her experience to good use at every opportunity. She has traveled to Africa to train Rwandan high school science teachers on delivering memorable lecture demonstrations, and was able to enjoy Kigali’s solar eclipse in 2013. More recently, she has developed lesson plans to teach astronomy at the elementary school level.