Sciences and Exploration Directorate

Tyler Parsotan

(RESEARCH AST, FIELDS AND PARTICLES)

 tmpataki@gmail.com

 301.286.4678

Org Code: 661

NASA/GSFC
Mail Code: 661
Greenbelt, MD 20771

Employer: NASA

Brief Bio


Tyler is the first born child in a family of immigrants from the small island nation Trinidad and Tobago, in the Caribbean. He is from Shirley, NY, where he graduated early from high school at the age of 16. Tyler became very interested in physics due to his early, homegrown passion for astronomy, as well as his high school physics teacher passion for the subject.


He went on to attend Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, FL with the major of Space Physics. There, Tyler was a part of the Honors Program, the National Leadership Honor Society, the National Physics Honor Society, and the McNair Post Baccalaureate Program, a program to help under-represented and first generation college students acquire graduate degrees.


Additionally, Tyler worked in the Space Physics Research Lab under Dr. Matthew Zettergren, and also conducted astrophysical research under Dr. Jason Aufdenberg. Under Dr. Zettergren, he researched electron heating in the upper atmosphere and under Dr. Aufdenberg, he investigated the use of Bayesian statistics to extract stellar parameters from stellar models.


With the knowledge that he gained from his project with Dr. Aufdenberg, Tyler was able to acquire an internship at NASA Johnson Space Center where he worked on determining when parts on the International Space Station would break.

Tyler graduated from Embry-Riddle in 2015 whereafter he attended Oregon State University as a graduate student in the Department of Physics. He was under the supervision of Dr. Davide Lazzati studying the mechanism behind GRB prompt emission -- the highest energy emission of these events detected in gamma-rays and X-rays. 


He is now a Postdoctoral researcher at NASA Goddard where her spends his time conducting theoretical research on GRB prompt emission and conducting mission support for the Swift BAT instrument.

Research Interests


Gamma Ray Burst Prompt Emission

Astrophysics: Gamma-ray Bursts

I conduct simulations of the prompt emission in GRBs in order to try to understand what radiative mechanisms play a role in the production of the prompt radiation that is detected from GRBs. In order to do this I use the MCRaT (https://github.com/lazzati-astro/MCRaT/) and ProcessMCRaT (https://github.com/parsotat/ProcessMCRaT) codes.

Education


2015-2021 PhD Physics, OSU

2019-2020 MEng Mechanical Engineering, Specialty: Thermal Fluid Sciences, OSU

2015-2018 MS Physics, OSU

2011-2015 BS Space Physics, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University

Publications


Refereed

Parsotan, T., R. K. Cochrane, C. C. Hayward, et al. D. Anglés-Alcázar, R. Feldmann, C. A. Faucher-Giguère, S. Wellons, and P. F. Hopkins. 2020. Realistic mock observations of the sizes and stellar mass surface densities of massive galaxies in FIRE-2 zoom-in simulations Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 501 (2): 1591-1602 [10.1093/mnras/staa3765]

Parsotan, T., D. López-Cámara, and D. Lazzati. 2020. Photospheric Polarization Signatures from Long Gamma-Ray Burst Simulations The Astrophysical Journal 896 (2): 139 [10.3847/1538-4357/ab910f]

Cochrane, R. K., C. C. Hayward, D. Anglés-Alcázar, et al. J. Lotz, T. Parsotan, X. Ma, D. Kereš, R. Feldmann, C. A. Faucher-Giguère, and P. F. Hopkins. 2019. Predictions for the spatial distribution of the dust continuum emission in $\boldsymbol {1\,\lt\, z\,\lt\, 5}$ star-forming galaxies Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society 488 (2): 1779-1789 [10.1093/mnras/stz1736]

Parsotan, T., D. López-Cámara, and D. Lazzati. 2018. Photospheric Emission from Variable Engine Gamma-Ray Burst Simulations The Astrophysical Journal 869 (2): 103 [10.3847/1538-4357/aaeed1]

Parsotan, T., and D. Lazzati. 2018. A Monte Carlo Radiation Transfer Study of Photospheric Emission in Gamma-Ray Bursts The Astrophysical Journal 853 (1): 8 [10.3847/1538-4357/aaa087]