About Me:
I am a senior researcher with the Nebulous collaboration studying evolutionary algorithm applications for physics and astronomy instrumentation!
I also work as a coding instructor at The Coder School, Berkeley.
B.A. ASTROPHYSICS
UC BERKELEY C/O 2023
RESEARCH
A Methodology for Evolving Aerodynamically Optimal Spacecraft in the Free Molecular Flow Conditions of Very Low Earth Orbits
Julie Rolla, Rick Marcusen, Evan Imata, Emily Dolson, Max Foreback, Kyle Helson, Marcin Pilinski, Anselmo Pontes, Jonathan Sy, Joey Wagner.Feburary 15, 2026
ABSTRACT. — Very low Earth orbit (VLEO) enables improved spatial resolution and access to the lower thermosphere, but sustained operations are limited by strong, highly variable aerodynamic drag in the free molecular flow regime. In addition to drag, spacecraft must also meet numerous other requirements, including...
Continue reading
ECLIPSE: An Evolutionary Computation Library for Instrumentation Prototyping in Scientific Engineering
Max Foreback, Evan Imata, Vincent Ragusa, Jacob Weiler, Christina Shao, Joey Wagner, Katherine G. Skocelas, Jonathan Sy, Aman Hafez, Wolfgang Banzhaf, Amy Conolly, Kyle R. Helson, Rick Marcusen, Charles Ofria, Marcin Pilinski, Rajiv Ramnath, Bryan Reynolds, Anselmo C. Pontes, Emily Dolson, Julie Rolla.January 13, 2026
ABSTRACT. — Designing scientific instrumentation often requires exploring large, highly constrained design spaces using computationally expensive physics simulations. These simulators pose substantial challenges for integrating evolutionary computation (EC) into scientific design workflows. Evolutionary computation typically requires...
Continue reading
Solar-Energetic-Particle Track-Production Rates in Interplanetary Dust Grains at 1 AU
A. R. Poppe, P. S. Szabo, E. R. Imata, L. P. Keller, and R. Christoffersen.December 1, 2023
ABSTRACT. — Heavy (Z>26) solar energetic particles (SEPs) with energies ~1 MeV/nucleon are known to leave visible damage tracks in meteoritic materials. The density of such "solar flare tracks" in lunar and asteroidal samples has been used as a measure of a sample's exposure time to space, yielding critical information on planetary space weathering rates [e.g., 1] and the dynamics and lifetimes of interplanetary dust grains [e.g., 2, 3]. Knowledge of the SEP track accumulation rate in planetary materials at 1 au is critical for...
Continue reading
POSTER: Observing and Obtaining a Light Curve from a Potential Transiting Exoplanet
Derek Kaplan, Evan Imata, Tommaso Frigerio, Xinze Guo, Nadia Laswi, Anders Liu, Jeffrey MartinezDates of Research Involvement: September 2021 — May 2022
OUTREACH
Students provide interactive STEM learning experience to at-risk kids
June 29, 2021
A team of University of Hawai'i at Mānoa students introduced the world of robots to keiki at the Institute for Human Services (IHS) in Iwilei for UH Mānoa's “Be a Scientist” day on June 28. IHS is a human services agency focused on preventing and ending homelessness. Ionica Macadangdang, a senior biological engineering major, and Evan Imata, a junior astrophysics major, provided a hands-on learning experience with Dash bots...
Continue readingWRITING SAMPLES
Classifying Galaxy Morphology with Deep Learning Algorithms
Due to the importance of galaxy morphology for cosmological research and the abundance of galactic image data, automated methods are required to perform large-scale morphology classification tasks. Here, this issue is addressed by deploying deep learning models to automate the classification process. A custom-built Convolutional Neural Network is trained on galaxy images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and compared to data from the Galaxy Zoo 2 project using a root-mean-squared (RMSE) loss metric. The model is trained to identify morphological features such as galaxy mergers, bulges, disks, and spiral arms. This neural network achieves an RMSE loss of 0.1067 on a set of validation images. To atone for the flaws in the first model, a Residual Neural Network is implemented, using a fine-tuned ResNet50 model which achieves an RMSE loss of 0.1193 and reduces over-fitting. The rate of galaxy merger images (z) in the data set is predicted...
Continue readingCURRENT
February 15, 2026
New publication in the NASA Interplanetary Network Progress Report on evolutionary algorithm applications for spacecraft design. Read the abstract here.
December 20, 2024
I conducted research on solar energetic particle interactions with interplanetary dust grains at the Berkeley Space Sciences Laboratory. My results have been published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters and the NASA Technical Reports Server. Read the abstract here.