V. Ashley Villar

Last updated
Victoria Ashley Villar
Alma materMIT (B.Sc. 2014)
Harvard University (Ph.D. 2020)
Scientific career
Fields
  • Astronomy
  • astrophysics
InstitutionsColumbia University
Penn State
Harvard University

Victoria Ashley Villar is an astrophysicist who studies the death and collision of stars and their by-products using machine learning. [1] She also researches the origins of the heavy elements. She is currently an assistant professor at Harvard University. [2]

Contents

Early life and education

Villar attended high school at Vero Beach High School in Florida. [3] She received her Bachelor of Science in Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a minor in Mathematics in 2014. [2] As an undergraduate, she wrote her senior thesis on asteroseismology with the assistance of professors John Johnson and Josh Winn. [3] She earned her Ph.D. in Astronomy and Astrophysics from Harvard University in 2020. [2] Villar was subsequently a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University. After her time at Columbia, Villar became a faculty member at Pennsylvania State University from 2021-2022 and eventually left to return to Harvard as an assistant professor. [4] She was listed in the Science Category of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2022. [5]

Research

In February 2024, Villar and her research team had a funded three-day workshop by the Harvard Data Science Initiative (HDSI) Faculty Special Projects Fund to work with the same software used during the 2018 Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-Series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC) in order to study anomaly detection in celestial observations. [6] Villar is listed among model contributors on the PLAsTiCC meet the team webpage. [7] Villar also uses data from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in her work. [1]

Villar considers the use of machine learning to be fundamental to her work, comparing it to the adoption of statistics in scientific research, an important—even revolutionary—step forward. [8] Machine learning saves time and energy in analyzing massive data sets encountered in astronomy and astrophysics. [9] However, she cautions against the uncritical use of this technology when simpler techniques, such as linear algebra, could do better. [8]

References

  1. 1 2 Manning, Anne J. (October 15, 2024). "Astrophysicist Ashley Villar named a 2024 Packard Fellow". Harvard Gazette. Retrieved March 14, 2025.
  2. 1 2 3 "Ashley Villar". astronomy.fas.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2024-02-18.
  3. 1 2 "V. Ashley Villar". ashleyvillar.com. Retrieved 2024-04-07.
  4. ↑ "Harvard University".
  5. ↑ "Victoria Ashley Villar". Forbes. Retrieved 2024-03-17.
  6. ↑ "Ashley Villar's Proposal on Time-domain Astrophysics Anomaly Detection Secures Funding from the Harvard Data Science Initiative – HDSI". datascience.harvard.edu. Retrieved 2025-02-09.
  7. ↑ "Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC)". Photometric LSST Astronomical Time-series Classification Challenge (PLAsTiCC). Retrieved 2025-02-09.
  8. 1 2 Duffy, Hewson (June 4, 2024). "'Hyped Just About Right': How the AI Boom is Reshaping Research at Harvard". The Harvard Crimson. Retrieved July 5, 2025.
  9. ↑ Swayne, Matt (March 16, 2023). "Machine learning takes starring role in exploring the universe". Penn State News. Retrieved July 5, 2025.

Further reading

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