I’m a postoctoral research associate at the California Institute of Technology studying a variety of variable white dwarf stars using the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) and observational resources at the Keck and Palomar Observatories. I focus primarily on the discovery and characterization of white dwarfs exhibiting photometric variability due to transiting planetary debris or pulsations. I am also interested in developing novel techniques to distinguish different classes of variable white dwarfs using large time-domain survey datasets such as ZTF and the future Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). I was previously a graduate student at the Univeristy of Texas at Austin, where I made extensive use of facilities at McDonald Observatory to study pulsating Helium atmosphere white dwarfs, transiting planetary debris systems, and a variety of other objects from LISA-detectable double white dwarf binaries to fast-rotating spotted white dwarfs.
In addition to astronomy, I greatly enjoy spending time outdoors, either rock climbing, playing ultimate frisbee, or just walking around in the woods. I also enjoy developing software tools with Python for the reduction, analysis, and visualization of astronomical data.