About Me

I am currently in my second year in the UC - Berkeley Astrophysics Ph.D. program.  I grew up in Plymouth, MI, attending Plymouth-Canton High School where I graduated in 2001. I then attended the University of Michigan (Go Blue!) where I graduated with a dual degree in Astronomy & Astrophysics and Physics in 2004.  I completed the Master's program for an M.A. in Astronomy in Fall 2007, and am currently working toward the Ph.D.

In my free time, I like to bicycle, run, read, watch movies, watch sports, take photographs, explore San Francisco and Oakland, and visit New York.  I also volunteer for the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland, CA.  Click to see some of my photography.

Research Interests

While at the University of Michigan, I worked on two research projects.  The first was looking for evidence that Omega Centauri was a captured dwarf galaxy in the form of a stream of stars between it and the Milky Way. My second research project at the University of Michigan was developing image subtraction software to find supernovae in the ROTSE Sky Patrol data.  This then made way to analyze the data coming out of the ROTSE telescopes when they took images of a gamma-ray burst.  Due to my analysis of these GRBs, I am co-author on several publications out of the group, including some which I was an integral part of writing.

Now that I am at Berkeley, I have also worked on two projects, including my current one. Firstly, I continued in the field of gamma-ray bursts, using a telescope called PAIRITEL, which is one under the control of Prof. Josh Bloom. I used the J, H, & K filters to quickly follow up GRBs, but also to search for GRBs at z > 10.

I mainly work with Prof. Leo Blitz using the CARMA instrument in Owens Valley near Bishop, CA (a 15 element mm-band interferometer sitting atop Cedar Flat, in the White Mountains).  I have two smaller projects using the CARMA array, as well as my thesis project.  One small project that I am working on using the are using the mm-band capabilities to contribute to the spectral information we have on pulsar wind nebulae (PWNe) with Prof. Jon Arons due to the dearth of information available in intermediate wavebands.  My second small project is using the array to detect starburst galaxies at intermediate redshift (z ~ 1) from the DEEP Extended Groth Strip (EGS) field.

My thesis project is working with the ATLAS-3D Collaboration on mapping molecular disks in early-type galaxies.

Click the provided link to view papers on ADS.

Fellowships