Portfolio

My degree is in pure mathematices and computer science and I have extensive experience in TypeScript, React, NodeJS, SQL (several dialects), Python, C#, PHP and in tools like Blender, Inkscape and ffmpeg. Here are a few examples of my projects.

Fly

I worked with astronomer Richard Smart, the leader of the team that created the Gaia Catalogue of Nearby Stars (GCNS), to create a 3D web app to fly through the stars within 100 parsecs (325 light years).

We kept adding more and more features (accessible through the menu at the top left) to the resulting Fly web application and it ended up doing things that I originally did not think that a web app could handle thanks to the incredible features of three.js.

Link: Fly web application

More detailed article: Flying through the nearby stars

Uses: TypeScript, NodeJS, React, Material UI, three.js. Data processed using Python scripts.

The Nearest Stars

It has long been a dream of mine to see a catalog listing all the stars, brown dwarfs and planets within 10 parsecs (33 light years). When that catalog was finally created, to my surprise I was invited to be a coauthor of the paper and the main visualizer of the results.

I’ve put together a resource page with links to the resources including numerous posters and other visualizations: 10 parsec resources

I’ve written an article about the project and a game I developed based on the data: Gamifying the nearest stars

Data processed using Python, GIMP and Inkscape.

The Virtual Starship

The Virtual Starship is a Unity application written in C# and sold via the Meta Quest app store.

It provides numerous ways to visualize and travel around the Milky Way, mostly based on data derived from Data Release 3 from the European Space Agency’s Gaia Mission.

The Meta Quest app store page is here: Virtual Starship

Uses: Unity, C#, NodeJS for backend data apis, Blender, Inkscape, Audacity (for audio). Gaia Mission data processed using Python scripts.

Galactic Treasure Hunt

The Galactic Treasure Hunt is a multiplayer Horizon Worlds game. Players navigate starships to various nearby star systems and search orbiting star stations for alien artifacts, keys and other objects to fulfill missions.

The game was written using the Horizon Worlds desktop editor with Blender models and TypeScript.

Horizon Worlds link: Galactic Treasure Hunt

From Milky Way to Earth

I created this YouTube animation, which currently has more than 190 thousand views, using a Blender model of the Milky Way from Stefan Payne-Wardenaar combined with a number of my 3D maps.

Uses: Blender, ffmpeg and Python scripting to generate and combine the animation frames.

Link: From Milky Way to Earth