Faculty and Staff

Darren DePoy

Darren DePoy (depoy@tamu.edu) is the Rachal/Mitchell/Heep endowed professor of Physics and Astronomy and is the head of the Astronomical Instrumentation Lab. He came to Texas A&M in 2008 after working at The Ohio State University for 18 years, where he was a Professor and the Vice-Chair for Instrumentation. Dr. DePoy has designed and built state-of-the-art optical and infrared astronomical instruments for telescopes all over the world, including some of the first digital imaging systems in astronomy, near-infrared spectrometers and cameras, multi-wavelength cameras, innovative optical spectrographs, and a wide-field CCD imager. These instruments have been used for a wide variety of science projects: from detecting exoplanets to measuring the fundamental parameters of the Universe. 

Jennifer Marshall

Jennifer Marshall (marshall@tamu.edu) is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas A&M University. Her scientific interests include the study of near-field cosmology, specifically using metal-poor stars found in the halo of the Milky Way to better understand the formation mechanisms of the Galaxy and of the Universe as a whole. Most recently she has focused on studying the detailed kinematics and chemistry of satellite galaxies of the Milky Way, particularly those that have been discovered by the Dark Energy Survey.

Dr. Marshall currently serves as the Project Scientist for the Maunakea Spectroscopic Explorer, a next-generation massively multiplexed spectroscopic observatory. As an astronomical instrument builder she has led Texas A&M’s involvement in the Dark Energy Survey, producing the calibration systems that enable the unprecedentedly precise photometric measurements produced by the survey, and also in the HETDEX project, building the VIRUS spectrographs. She has also worked to develop a conceptual design for GMACS, the wide field multi-object spectrograph that will be a first-light instrument for the Giant Magellan Telescope.

Luke Schmidt

Luke Schmidt is an astronomer at Yerkes Observatory. Dr. Schmidt was an Associate Research Scientist at the TAMU Astronomical Instrumentation Lab from 2015 to 2024, and he managed the day-to-day activities of the lab and filled various roles in the lab instrumentation projects including management, optical and opto-mechanical design, detectors, and control systems. Dr. Schmidt has been involved with the development of a variety of optical and infrared astronomical instruments operating between 0.320 and 2.4 microns including imagers, spectrographs, interferometers, and calibration systems. Before coming to Texas A&M, he was an Instrumentation Scientist with the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer project and a Postdoc working on NESSI, an IR spectrometer (JHK bands).

Ryan Oelkers

Ryan Oelkers is an Assistant Professor at the University of Texas, Rio Grande Valley. Dr. Oelkers was an Assistant Research Scientist at the TAMU Astronomical Instrumentation Lab from 2021 to 2024, where he handled astronomical observations and data analysis. Prior to joining the Physics & Astronomy Department at Texas A&M University, he spent two years working in industry as an astronomer working out of Marshall Space Flight Center and as a data scientist with the Sysco Corporation. Between 2016 and 2019 he was a TESS Postdoctoral Fellow at Vanderbilt University, and he led the target selection for the NASA-TESS exoplanet mission, the spiritual successor to NASA’s Kepler exoplanet mission. His research focuses on the identification of stellar variability and exoplanets in large photometric data sets. He is also the lead data scientist for the TOROS survey.

Erika Cook

Erika Cook (ecook@tamu.edu) is a Research Assistant and Electrical Engineer at the Astronomical Instrumentation Lab. She designs control software for instrumentation projects, helps students with software and hardware, and manages the daily operations of the lab.