Experience

I have 7 years of research experience specializing in software development and experimental observations. While I have worked on a wide range of projects, all have involved writing or editing scripts to analyze data and infer unknown parameters using statistical analysis.

The most recent project I am working on is multi-layered. First, I want to determine the likelihood of recovering fine details of astronomical images distorted by the Earth's atmosphere, varying the frame count and using artificially generated data. Secondly, I want to implement algorithms such as ADMM (alternate direction method of mulipliers) which can improve current pipelines by breaking the computations into smaller parts, which will greatly decrease the costly processing time. Lastly, I want to further simplify the computation by introducing prior knowledge for point source objects. Instead of recovering a large array of pixels, the algorithm can instead solve for the location and relative brightness of the point sources.

Please see this page for additional documents

Programming

I have written scripts and utilized pipelines in a variety of computing languages. Julia and Python are my most used languages and I also have considerable experience using MATLAB, IDL, and C.

Many of the projects I have contributed to are listed on my advisor's, Fabien Baron, GitHub profile, while others are still being developed on GitLab, and handful of others are personal pipelines of my collaborators.

A collection of early projects written in Julia is listed on GitHub.

I'm teaching myself Java and I have learned that picking up new computing languages, much like learning a new spoken languages, comes easier after mastering the first.

GitHub

Fun Facts

I've been skating and playing roller derby since 2019.

I took classes on archaeology and British history when I studied abroad at Cambridge University in 2013.

During quarantine I bought an empty van and turned it into a camper.

Research

Limb darkening, stellar surface image reconstruction, and statistical modeling.

AAS 241 Poster Presentation

Poster presented at the 241st Meeting of the American Astronomical Association in 2023. Please click on the image to access the full, expandable poster.

TInstrument Installation

A fellow grad student and I helping to install a brand new telescope at Hard Labor Creek Observatory in Rutledge, GA in 2022.

Control Data

Generate fake maps to test the reliability of our image reconstruction code.

Control Data

Reconstruction of fake maps/ control data and prediction of star spot evolution.

Light Curve Reconstruction

Understand the change of brightness over time to find patterns and reconstruct the star spots and limb darkening of stellar surfaces.

Limb Darkening and Radius Errorbars

Calculating error bars and the best-fit parameters for data.

CHARA Observing

Learning how to operate MIRCX at the Center for High Angular Resolution Astronomy on Mt. Wilson, CA for three weeks.