Welcome

Please navigate the menu on top to go straight to the page of your interest. Is that a paper or a piece of software I wrote? Perhaps one of the online tools we developed? If you can't find what you are looking for, don't hesitate to contact me.

What's new

• Paper on Efficient Catalog Matching with Dropout Detection has been accepted for publication in PASP
• 25th International Conference on Scientific and Statistical Database Management in Baltimore, July 29-31
• Teaching a course on Practical Scientific Analysis of Big Data (AS.171.628) in Spring 2013
• A short course on Graphics Processor Programming in CUDA (AS.171.633) is offered in March-April
• Accepted version of Hubble Source Catalog paper is now online at arXiv:1206.0644
• Program on Statistical and Computational Methodology for Massive Datasets at SAMSI, 2012-2013
• Opening Workshop of Big Data Program at SAMSI, Research Triangle Park NC, September 9-12, 2012
• Research Fellow at the Statistical and Applied Mathematical Sciences Institute, September-October, 2012
• AstroInformatics, International Summer School on AstroComputing at HiPACC, July 9-20, 2012
• The next-generation SkyQuery is presented at SSDBM 2012 on June 25, 2012
• Beta version of the Hubble Source Catalog is released at AAS, see poster and paper
• New github release of code for matching catalogs on many GPUs, also at the GPU Technology Conference

About me

I am an Associate Research Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the Johns Hopkins University. My primary interest is in cosmology, large-scale structure and galaxy evolution. I have been focusing on various statistical and computational challenges in astronomy. Modern detector technology is rapidly changing the way we do science. The large projects I work on, including the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, pioneered much of the new methodology, but the transition has been fairly smooth so far. The change with the next-generation telescopes will not be incremental. New hardware architectures, new algorithms and new statistical methods will be needed to analyze the observations of the upcoming surveys, such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope. It's going to be a very interesting next decade. Perfect time to be in astronomy!

Selected publications on cross-identification

1. Budavári, T., Szalay, A. S. 2008 The Astrophysical Journal, 679, 301 Probabilistic Cross-Identification of Astronomical Sources
2. Heinis, S., Budavári, T., Szalay, A. S. 2009 The Astrophysical Journal, 705, 739 Cross-Identification Performance from Simulated Detections: Galex and SDSS
3. Kerekes, G., Budavári, T., Csabai, I., Connolly, A. J., Szalay, A. S. 2010 The Astrophysical Journal, 719, 59 Cross-Identification of Stars with Unknown Proper Motions
4. Budavári, T. 2011 The Astrophysical Journal, 736, 155 Probabilistic Cross-identification of Cosmic Events

Recent first author publications

1. Budavári, T., Lubow, S. H. 2012 The Astrophysical Journal, 761, 188 Catalog Matching with Astrometric Correction and its Application to the Hubble Legacy Archive
2. Budavári, T., Szalay, A. S., Fekete, G. 2010 Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 122, 1375 Searchable Sky Coverage of Astronomical Observations: Footprints and Exposures
3. Budavári, T., Wild, V., Szalay, A. S., Dobos, L., Yip, C.-W. 2009 Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, 394, 1496 Reliable eigenspectra for new generation surveys
4. Budavári, T. 2009 The Astrophysical Journal, 695, 747 A Unified Framework for Photometric Redshifts