I’m a graduate student in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, studying the relationship between supernovae and their host galaxies with Dr. Gautham Narayan. We can use these correlations to photometrically classify transients and improve their standardizability in preparation for large surveys such as the Legacy Survey for Space and Time (LSST). I also work with colleagues at Los Alamos National Laboratory on combining cosmology simulations with inline chemical networks to study the early evolution of complex molecules. I received my Bachelor’s degree in Computational Modeling and Data Analytics from Virginia Tech.
I’m also passionate about making astronomy accessible to all. I founded astro[sound]bites, a podcast where I discuss recent astronomy research with two other graduate students. I’ve also led outreach efforts in Libreville, Gabon for the 2016 solar eclipse, and Goa, India for the Story of Space. I’m constantly looking for new ways to incorporate cultural knowledge and sound-based representations of information in astronomy. In my free time, I love biking and running, playing the banjo, and learning more about the incredible diversity of animals with which we share the planet.
PhD in Astronomy, 2023 (exp.)
University of Illinios at Urbana-Champaign
BSc in Computational Modeling & Data Analytics, 2017
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
By aggressively using the Freedom of Information Act, SHNS reporter Tom Hargrove constructed a database of over 525,000 homicides from the past 30 years. He found that nearly 185,000 of these killings remain unsolved, and that success of police departments vary wildly across the country. Can his analysis be improved using machine learning?
As the recipient of the 2015 Wayne and Claire Horton Fellowship, I traveled to Gabon and studied traditional astronomy beliefs in different Ethnic groups.
The large scale distribution of globular clusters in the central region of the Coma cluster of galaxies is derived through the analysis of Hubble Space Telescope/Advanced Camera for Surveys data.
The National Science Foundation is interested in evaluating the economic impact of Open Source Software (OSS) without using survey data. This is a three-tiered problem; we must: (1) gather data, (2) define what it means to innovate, and (3) model the innovation of OSS packages.
For thousands of years, we have used our eyes to study the cosmos, but what if we could use our ears, or our hands? What would we learn if we gave everyone a chance to experience our universe?
This report investigates the effect of increasing driverless cars on a closed segment of highway with a sophisticated simulation that includes various speeds, lane changes, levels of traffic, and other realistic characteristics of roadway flow.