About Me

Education: I'm currently a Ph.D. Student in Physics with an Astrophysics Concentration at the University of New Mexico. I completed my Bachelors of Science in Astronomy and Physics at the University of Arizona, with Honors in Astronomy, in May 2024.

Research Interests: My two main research interests are exoplanets and astronomy education/science literacy. See the Research page for more details on my past and current research!

Hobbies and Other Interests: When I'm not in classes or working on research, I enjoy playing percussion, reading, watching sports, and crocheting!

Research

Publications: See my ADS link here and Google Scholar link here!
Selected posters and presentations are linked in my CV!

Analyzing JWST Observations of the Exoplanet LTT 9779b
My pre-candidacy project at the University of New Mexico will be analyzing transmission spectra data from the NIRSpec instrument on JWST to learn more about the atmosphere of this hot Neptune exoplanet. Stay tuned for updates as I work towards a first-author paper in a year or so!

Characterizing Post-Habitable Exoplanets with Habitable Worlds Observatory
The under-development Habitable Worlds Observatory (HWO) mission aims to directly image exoplanets. My project at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory involved developing atmospheric retrieval models to see what sorts of spectral data we would need from this mission to determine if an imaged planet is a Venus-like exoplanet. I am writing a paper on this work for publication in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society.

Compositional Links Between Rocky Exoplanets and their Host Stars
In the Summer of 2022, I did research through a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of New Mexico. I calculated iron-to-silicate mass fractions for stars and planets starting from stellar spectra. The trend I found between the compositions was weaker than past trends, and others now confirm this weaker trend.

Analyzing Student Reasoning in Astrobiology MOOC Writing
This was my Honors Thesis in Astronomy, earning me Honors from the W.A. Franke Honors College at the University of Arizona. I compared student writing assignments with experts to determine what reasoning students tended to use. I am working on rewriting this thesis for publication in the journal Astrobiology.

Scalable Grading of Student Writing in MOOCs
Within Massive Open Online Courses, grading assignments is hard to scale, and is currently done by peers. However, peer grading is unreliable when compared to instructor grading. This project took responses from our MOOC writing assignments and compared the grades the assignments received from instructors, peers, and grades given by Large Language Models. A paper on this work has been submitted to the International Journal of Artificial Intelligence in Education. We are now expanding this work to compare feedback instructors, peers, and LLMs give on student responses.

Combating Science Misinformation Online
This project was partially funded by an Arizona/NASA Space Grant in 2021-2022. I read hundreds of articles on ten pseudoscience topics, classifying them as real or fake science and looking for claim-evidence pairs within these articles. We also worked on using Large Language Models to determine whether an article is real or fake science, and what topic it is part of.

Outreach

Teaching: In the Fall of 2024, I will be a Teaching Assistant for a section of the Introductory Astronomy Lab at UNM.

Outreach: At UNM, I am a Volunteer Telescope Operator for some of the Campus Observatory's Friday night open houses. While at UofA, I worked as a Planetarium Operator and Science Center Interpreter at the Flandrau Science Center and Planetarium, the only planetarium in Southern Arizona. I also volunteered as a NASA Partner Eclipse Ambassador to increase awareness for the October 2023 and April 2024 solar eclipses.

Equity & Inclusion: I was elected as Web Technology Officer and GPSA Rep for the Physics and Astronomy Graduate Student Association at UNM. In these roles, I am working to revamp the GSA website to make it more accessible and attravtive to prospective students and respresenting my department's needs and interests in the university-wide Graduate and Professional Student Association. For my final two years at UofA, I was a peer leader for the TIMESTEP program, sitting on panels to share my experiences and promote diversity and inclusion in astrophysics.