About Me

I am a second-year Ph.D. student in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory. I was born and raised in and around Boise, Idaho, and I began considering astronomy as a career after taking my first astronomy class in high school. Since then, I've been dedicated to learning as much as I can about our universe from here in Tucson!

I spend my time studying exoplanets and brown dwarf companions with direct imaging observations. I work with Prof. Kevin Wagner and Prof. Dániel Apai's research group, and I have principally used the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) for my research. My first research paper involved studying a circumbinary brown dwarf in the Pleiades, HII 1348 B, which we imaged in the mid-infrared for the first time using the LBTI. We also provided the first modeling of its slow (>1000-yr period) orbit. This work is now published in the Astronomical Journal: read the paper here!

I work to optimize image-processing pipelines that help to remove the bright glare of stars so that dim companions orbiting around them can be seen directly. In my research, I characterize the orbital motion of such companions to nearby stars, as well as model their observed atmospheric properties. From these observables, we may gain insights into the formation histories and past dynamical interactions of these objects. I have a particular interest in the Pleiades open cluster, which contains more than 1,000 stars (including HII 1348) that are coeval and quite young (100 million years old). Our Sun was on the other side of the Milky Way in its orbit, and there were dinosaurs on Earth when these stars formed!