Raised in Garland, Texas, Matthew received his B.S. in Physics from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) in 2016. He completed his doctorate in 2024 at the University of California, Irvine (UCI) through the joint Computational Science Ph.D. program with San Diego State University (SDSU). There, Matthew worked with Dr. Wayne Hayes on the study of spiral galaxy morphology using computer vision and machine learning techniques. The results of this work can be found in his dissertation entitled, “Using SpArcFiRe to Help Automate GALFIT’s Multi-component Decomposition of Spiral Galaxies“. He also contributed to the Dark Energy Scientific Instrument (DESI) collaboration under the supervision of Dr. Antonella Palmese at Carnegie Mellon University. Their work focuses on time domain astronomy with an emphasis on transient phenomena in DESI observations and gravitational wave follow-up from detections by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO).

His awards include: a Graduate S-STEM (G-STEM) fellowship from the Computational Science Research Center (CSRC) at SDSU, a Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI) fellowship from UCI, a Visiting Scholars Program (VSP) award from the Universities Research Association in collaboration with Fermilab, and a fellowship from the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Data Science Program (LSSTC DSFP).