About Me
I am a first-year Ph.D. student at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory in Astronomy & Astrophysics. I was born and raised in and around Boise, Idaho, and I first began considering astronomy as a career after taking my first astronomy class at Eagle High School. Since then, I've been dedicated to learning as much as I can about our universe from here in Tucson!
In addition to my coursework, I spend my time studying exoplanets and brown dwarfs with direct imaging. I work with Profs. Kevin Wagner and Dániel Apai. Currently, I'm studying a circumbinary brown dwarf in the Pleiades, which we recently imaged in the mid-IR using the Large Binocular Telescope Interferometer (LBTI) (see my Home page for some reduced images). This work is in press at the Astronomical Journal as my first first-author publication: read the paper here!
My research includes optimizing image processing pipelines that help to remove the bright glare of stars hosting gas giant exoplanets and brown dwarf companions. I have also worked to characterize the orbital motion of such substellar companions and infer their atmospheric properties to gain insight into the formation histories and dynamical interactions of these objects. The brown dwarf companion that I have focused much of my time studying is of particular interest as one of the few known substellar companions in the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades is a unique place to study a large number of young star systems, which formed only about 100 million years ago (there were dinosaurs on Earth when these stars formed!).
I am interested in developing techniques for imaging smaller exoplanets at smaller angular separations from their host stars than is presently possible. The ultimate goal is to image an earth-sized exoplanet in the habitable zone of a Sun-like star, though there is plenty of work to be done along the way!



