About

I am a scientific software developer. I build and teach software for data acquisition, data management, and scientific data analysis. I am employed at Brookhaven National Lab’s National Synchrotron Light Source II, a Department of Energy facility that supports a broad range of scientific research.

My primary work is the Bluesky Project, which leverages the scientific Python ecosystem to enable experimental science at the lab-bench scale and facility scale. I also fiddle with distributed hardware control using caproto. I volunteer with the Environmental Data & Governance Initiative, focusing on tracking changes to the government’s environmental reporting; that work has been adopted by the Internet Archive wayback machine. See github.com/danielballan for more of my software contributions.

I enjoy advocating for open source software and open science. I maintain a guide to help scientists get started with good software tools and habits.

I earned a PhD in Experimental Soft Condened Matter Physics with Robert Leheny in 2014. My work included development of software for particle tracking and microrheology that is still widely used. As an undergraduate, I studied music, applied math, and physics at the University of Rochester.

I live in Baltimore with my wife and daughter. I make regular visits to Brookhaven, located outside of New York City. I am an amateur musician, a Lindy Hopper, and an enthusiastic Baltimorean.