Introduction & Interest in Contributing: Subhodip Patra (SDE Intern & Math/CS Background)

[SubhodipPatra]

Hi everyone,

My name is Subhodip Patra, and I am from India. I am writing to formally introduce myself and express my strong interest in joining the TARDIS community and contributing to the tardis project.

About My Background:
I recently completed my Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and Statistics (Honors), followed by my MS in Computer Science. Additionally, I am currently starting my journey as a Software Development Engineer (SDE) Intern at Infinite Locus. Because of my dual background in theoretical mathematics and practical software engineering, I am deeply fascinated by the intersection of high-dimensional sampling, Monte Carlo methods, and astrophysical spectral synthesis.

My Understanding of the Project:
I have been exploring the tardis repository and I am very impressed by how it leverages Monte Carlo radiative transfer methods to analyze exploding stars. I also understand how critical the Numba JIT-compiled backend is for propagating photon packets efficiently, and how tardis maps these mathematical concepts into usable Python tools for rapid modeling of supernovae.

How I Hope to Contribute:
Given my statistics and programming background, I am particularly interested in:

• Statistical Convergence Diagnostics: Looking into how we ensure the Monte Carlo packet estimators have converged well (e.g., expanding on the convergence plots and exploring variance reduction techniques).
• Algorithm Profiling: Learning how the Python-Numba implementation works to see if there are any optimizations to be made in the packet propagation steps.
• General Maintenance: Helping with any "good first issues" to familiarize myself with the codebase while applying the engineering practices I am learning in my SDE internship.

I am currently setting up my local development environment with all the necessary dependencies (Astropy, Numba, Pandas). I am eager to start my open-source journey here, learn from the core maintainers through code reviews, and help improve the project.

Please let me know if there are specific areas or open issues where a beginner with my background could be most useful right now. I truly want to join your community and start contributing, so please guide me on the best way to get started!

[SubhodipPatra]

@ftsamis @wkerzendorf @ssim @airvzxf
Hi sir, I just posted my introduction in the General Discussions. I am very eager to learn and start contributing to TARDIS!
Could you please guide me on what I should look at first? If there is a "good first issue" or a specific area of the codebase you'd recommend I start with, I would really appreciate your mentorship. Thank you!