Who is Michael Hammer?
This all started in an apartment with an off-white carpet in Queens, New York. When I was young, I attended the PS 175 Lynn Gross Discovery School and JHS 157 Stephen A. Halsey. Peter Parker, David Krumholtz (the actor who played mathematician Charlie Eppes in Numb3rs), and Ron Taam are all from my neighborhood.
After eighth grade, I took my talents to Tribeca and joined Stuyvesant High School where I won two NBA championships with the Miami Heat benefited greatly from all of the amazing teachers at Stuy including but not limited to Ms. Avigdor, Mr. Tillman, Mr. Henderson, Ms. Pascu, Ms. Suri, Dr. O'Malley, Mr. Sandler, Mr. Zamansky, Mr. Polazzo, and Mr. Cocoros. (I would list all of the great teachers I had in high school, but it wouldn't fit in the margins.)
At Stuy, I took advantage of our excellent computer science program to take a bunch of computer science classes. I also participated in the NASA Science Research Mentoring Program (SRMP) at the American Museum of Natural History (AMNH), where I was mentored by Mike Greenberg and worked with Ben Garelick. At the museum, I helped analyze the impact trajectories of microscopic comet samples collected in aerogel by NASA's Stardust Mission. Instead of choosing between computer science and astronomy research, I decided to pursue astronomy research while still continuing to utilize computer science.
At Cornell, I did a lot of astronomy-related things that you can read about on my undergraduate research and undergraduate outreach pages. One of the major non-astronomy things I did was join the sport taekwondo club. Although I have played sports casually my entire life, this was my first real opportunity to train under some sort of an experienced coach for an extended year-plus period of time. I competed in several ECTC tournaments at the beginner and intermediate levels, worked my way up to a blue belt, and had my first major surgery!
In general, I love sports and my favorite teams are the New York Mets, the New York Rangers, the New York Jets, the New York Red Bulls, UNC Tar Heel basketball, AFC Ajax, Port Adelaide FC, the USMNT and the USWNT, and Oranje football. In Tucson, I played tennis in USTA leagues and tournaments, and took baseball lessons. In Taipei, I'm taking table tennis lessons.
Contact Info
Find me in my office, or send me an email!