I am an astrophysicist that loves building massive data processing pipelines that solve intractable problems. I have applied these skills to a diverse set of challenges ranging from scaling R&D products on cloud infrastructure to constructing calibration pipelines for the world’s largest telescopes. I am at my best when working alongside other passionate collaborators toward a common goal.
October 2022 - Present, Salt Lake City, UT
Aumni gives you instant access to the most reliable financial and legal insights across your portfolio, sourced directly from your executed legal agreements.
July 2023 - Present
October 2022 - June 2023
November 2020 - October 2022, San Francisco, CA
Planet provides daily satellite data that helps businesses, governments, researchers, and journalists understand the physical world and take action.
March 2022 - October 2022
June 2021 - October 2022
November 2020 - May 2021
September 2011 - June 2015, Chicago, IL
A tutoring agency that focused on communication, empathy, and creative thinking to help students gain fundamental understanding and successful problem solving strategies
September 2012 - June 2015, Chicago, IL
An ensemble based theatre company that presents high-quality and engaging productions from America’s up and coming new playwrights
2015-2021 Ph.D in Astronomy & AstrophysicsGPA: 3.79 out of 4Publications:
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2007-2011 BS in Theatre & PhysicsGPA: 3.75 out of 4Extracurricular Activities:
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ZTF Object Reader Tool is a set of functions to organize and access the ZTF Public Data Release lightcurves across multiple colors.
Pipeline software used to remove atmospheric fringes from optimal astronomical images. Official stage in the Zwicky Transient Facility i-band data reduction pipeline running on 50,000+ images per night.
A Milky Way microlensing simulation code that stellar evolution, dust models and observation effects to identify optimal strategies for microlensing detections.
We conduct the first multiyear search for microlensing events on the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), an all-sky optical synoptic survey that observes the entire visible northern sky every few nights. We discover 60 high-quality microlensing events in the 3 yr of ZTF-I using the bulk lightcurves in the ZTF Public Data Release 5. 19 of our events are found outside of the Galactic plane, nearly doubling the number of previously discovered events in the stellar halo from surveys pointed toward the Magellanic Clouds and the Andromeda galaxy.
Here we present a method for constructing models of these atmospheric fringes using Principal Component Analysis that can be used to identify and remove these artifacts from contaminated images. In addition, we present the Uniform Background Indicator as a quantitative measurement of the reduced correlated background noise and photometric error present after removing fringes. We conclude by evaluating the effect of our method on measuring faint sources through the injection and recovery of artificial stars in both single-image epochs and co-additions. Our method for constructing atmospheric fringe models and applying those models to produce cleaned images is available for public download in the open source Python package fringez.
We predict that the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF), an all-sky optical synoptic survey that observes the entire visible northern sky every few nights, will observe ∼1100 microlensing events in 3 yr of observing within 10° latitude of the Galactic plane, with ∼500 events in the outer Galaxy (ℓ ≥ 10°). Using the microlensing modeling software PopSyCLE, we compare the microlensing populations in the Galactic bulge and the outer Galaxy. We also present an analysis of the microlensing event ZTF18abhxjmj to demonstrate how to leverage these population statistics in event modeling.
The Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) is an optical time-domain survey that surveys the visible Northern sky every few nights in ZTF g-band and r-band, as well as an i-band filter used only for partnership observations and thus absent from this analysis. Transformations between the photometric systems of ZTF, Pan-STARRS1 (PS1), and Johnson–Morgan–Cousins (UBV) are essential for extending both the time-baseline and wavelength coverage of ZTF catalogs with information from other catalogs. We use cross-matching catalogs and simple stellar population synthesis models to derive photometric transformations from PS1 and UBV to ZTF.
Over my four years living in Chicago I performed in nine shows, acted in five films, assistant directed three productions, and taken over a dozen classes in acting for the stage, film, improv and Meisner technique. In 2012, along with several other theatre artists, I founded The Poor Theatre as a way to build such an ensemble. We strove to explore those parts of the human experience often overlooked. We worked to give voice to stories that often go unheard. My contributions to the company were both as a member of the acting ensemble and the Managing Director, before I left the company in 2015.
I tutored high school, undergraduate, and post-baccalaureate students in physics and astronomy in my years between Northwestern and UC Berkeley. My teaching style is greatly informed by my time spent as an actor, where I learned that communication is a skill one develops and hones with practice. My time has also been spent working to develop physics and robotics programs for middle and high school students in Evanston, IL (Northwestern University Center for Talent Development) and Oak Park, IL (Oak Park Education Foundation). Using all facets of STEM curriculum, I worked with students to analytically, strategically and cooperatively design, engineer, build, program, test and operate competition robots.
