Research interests include X-ray astronomy; X-ray telescopes & instrumentation; optical design; machine learning for astronomy.

Buffo's work focuses on developing adjustable X-ray optics for future applications in X-ray astrophysics.

Cecilia Fasano was a graduate research assistant in the DeRoo research group from 2020 to 2025. Cecilia fabricates and measures X-ray/UV gratings for use in space-based astronomical instruments.

Examining the X-ray spectra of supernova remnants in the Large Magellanic Clouds.

Kristie studies X-ray spectra of binary stellar systems. She worked in the DeRoo research group starting in Spring 2020 and received her PhD in Physics and Astronomy in 2025.

Colin Packard’s research interests center primarily around instrumentation and hardware development, photometry, and observational astronomy. He is currently working with Dr. Philip Kaaret, Dr. Casey DeRoo, and Dr. Jun Wang on both X-ray detection with CMOS sensors, and the development and testing of sensor hardware for an air or space based platform for use in measuring atmospheric pollutants via Earth observing-photometry.

Jacob studies X-ray instrumentation with applications for high energy astronomy. Motivated by the NICER telescope launched in 2017 and the following SEXTANT demonstration, Jacob is primarily interested in the characterization of pulsar emission and optimization of X-ray telescopes for pulsar observation. This work currently involves fabrication of slumped glass mirror substrates, electron-beam deposition of metallic reflective coatings, and optical metrology. Other work involves phase-resolved spectral analysis.

Integral in setting and operating hardware in the DeRoo lab as well as conducting/analyzing interferometric measurements of gratings.

Watkins undergraduate research focused on machine learning to identify outliers in the Chandra Source Catalog v2.0.

Weber is part of a research group examining the performance of commercial CMOS sensors for use in soft X-ray observations and their potential as low-cost alternatives to CCD sensors.