Selected Research Projects

A complete list of my published projects can be found on either NASA ADS or Google Scholar. Some relevant projects are:

  • Open mulTiwavelength Transient Even Repository (OTTER):
    OTTER is live! The goal of OTTER is to host a cleaned version of all public time domain photometry. The current dataset and codes are available at the OTTER github (Franz et al., 2026)

  • Gravitational Wave Follow-up:
    As part of the Searches After Gravitational waves Using ARizona Observatories (SAGUARO) collaboration, I help search for and vet (or analyze) electromagnetic counterparts to gravitational waves. As part of this, I led a project and paper on the Type IIb Supernova 2025ulz, a potential counterpart to a gravitational wave event, that we show to be unlikely related (Franz et al., 2025).

  • A Tool for Rapid Object Vetting and Examination (TROVE):
    TROVE is a web application and API for real-time vetting of electromagnetic counterparts to multi-messenger events. This is closely related to the SAGUARO collaboration and will be essential support for optimizing community follow-up of poorl localized gravitational wave, neutrino, and high energy transients.

  • Exploring the connection between Extreme Coronal Line Emitters (ECLEs) and TDEs
    ECLEs are high ionization metal lines observed in the nucleus of galaxies, some of which are unambiguously associated with tidal disruption events (TDEs). We are using radio observations to probe the properties of these galaxies on sub-parsec scales to try to better understand why only some TDEs produce ECLs.

  • Constraining the Neutrino Magnetic Dipole Moment:
    By modifying the MESA codes and evoloving stars up until the tip of the red giant branch, I used a novel machine learning methodology to place constraints on the neutrino magnetic dipole moment. This work was with Dr. Jeremy Sakstein and Mitchell Dennis at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa.

  • Searching for Extraterrestrial life around Exoplanets:
    With Dr. Steve Croft at UC Berkeley's Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, I looked for signs of life in transiting exoplanets using the Green Bank Observatory radio dish.

  • Spectroscopic Lenses in DESI:
    I developed a pipeline to search the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) data for spectroscopic lenses with Dr. John Moustakas.

Highlighted Software & Codes

As part of research I also enjoy developing reusable codes to both reproduce my results and enable similar analyses in the future. All of the code for my projects is publicly available on my GitHub. Here are a few of my most relevant projects:

  • OTTER API
    A python package for interacing with the OTTER datasets that we recently published in the Journal of Open Source Software.

  • TROVE
    The TROVE repository hosts all of our open source code to build the Django application for the TROVE project.

  • syncfit
    A python package for fitting synchrotron radiation dominated spectral energy distributions with commonly used theoretical models. This package utilized multiple Bayesian Markov chain Monte Carlo tools to optimize the best model fit for the data in a high dimensional parameter space.

  • SAGUARO
    SAGUARO (Searches After Gravitational waves Using ARizona Observatories) is a multimessenger followup program for optical searches for multiwavelength counterparts to gravitational wave events. As part of this project, I work on the Target and Observation Management infrastructure for easily visualizing and triggering followup observations.

  • hepfile
    A software used to store so-called heterogeneous datasets, or data that does not fit into the typical MxN table, in a way that makes reading and writing fast.