Portrait of Dr. Gilly

About

Dr. Gilly

Research Scientist · NorthWest Research Associates · Boulder, Colorado

I study the Sun's corona and the wind it drives across the solar system: how the corona is heated, how waves carry energy through it, and how the solar wind gets up to speed. My work pairs forward models with observations from imagers, spectrometers, spectropolarimeters and coronagraphs, and I'm a Co-Investigator on NASA's PUNCH mission.

I earned my PhD at the University of Colorado Boulder with Steve Cranmer. Along the way I build open tools for the field, like the RHEF filter in SunPy's sunkit-image and the HelioSoftware apps.

Email me Research CV (PDF) Publications

InstrumentsSDO/AIA · PUNCH · CoMP · DKIST/Cryo-NIRSP
ModelsGHOSTS · FLUX · ZEPHYR · FORWARD · WSA · PFSS/NLFFF
CodePython & SunPy · IDL · C · MATLAB

Path so far

  1. 2026–
    Research Scientist, NorthWest Research Associates · Boulder, since January 2026
  2. 2025–
    PUNCH Co-Investigator, with Craig DeForest (SwRI) Bringing funded research onto PUNCH data, working alongside the mission's Science Operations Center.
  3. 2023–26
    Postdoctoral researcher, SwRI, with Chris Lowder Coronal magnetic topology with the fluxon framework (FLUX), and solar wind acceleration along field lines.
  4. 2021–25
    PUNCH Associate Investigator, HAO, with Sarah Gibson Forward models of heliospheric white-light imagery and the processing steps behind it.
  5. 2016–22
    Graduate researcher, LASP / CU Boulder, with Steve Cranmer GHOSTS: line-of-sight effects and non-equilibrium ionization in coronal spectroscopy.
  6. 2022
    PhD, Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, CU Boulder Spectroscopic Analysis and Image Processing of the Optically-Thin Solar Corona
  7. 2018
    MS, Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences, CU Boulder
  8. 2015
    BS, Physics (Astrophysics concentration), Georgia Tech

Service

  • Early Career Committee, AGU Space Physics & Aeronomy (2023–)
  • Webmaster, AGU SPA section (2020–)
  • Student Representative, SHINE Steering Committee (2020–22)
  • Organizer and host, SHINE Student Day (2017–22)

Outreach

  • Production manager and public-talk facilitator, Fiske Planetarium (2018–22)
  • Public observatory host, Sommers-Bausch Observatory (2015–22) and Georgia Tech (2013–15)
  • Recorded public talks

CV

Research CV (2025) · Teaching CV (2025) · Complete CV (2024)

About this site

This site is hand-built and deliberately simple: static HTML, one CSS file, a little vanilla JavaScript, and a single Cloudflare Worker (the ensō impressions endpoint). No npm, no bundler, no framework — every page is something you could open and read. Deployment is just git push.

The look comes from the site's own toys. The ensō calendar and editor settled on a warm-paper-and-ink palette with a single gold accent and a flash-free dark mode; the whole site now shares those exact design tokens. A small detail I'm fond of: the calendar and the editor reproduce the same daily ensō from the same date, byte for byte, by pulling the same pseudo-random draws in the same order — a determinism contract that lets the "edit this day" button round-trip perfectly.

The visual foundations began life as the HTML5 UP “Strata” template, used and adapted under CC BY 3.0. See also the archive of older pages.