Interests
Observational Astronomy, including: Large-Scale Structure, Supernovae, Cosmology, Galaxies, and much more…
I also have some interest in simulations and theoretical aspects of astronomy.
Experience
Type Ia supernova rate:
I am working with Professors Kris Stanek and Chris Kochanek on determining the local Type Ia supernova rate using ASAS-SN data. This is the largest sample used for an absolute volumetric rate calculation that is almost 100% spectroscopically classified. More precise rates can provide insight into the progenitors and mechanisms that lead to SN Ia events as well as the evolution with redshift and dependence on galaxy types.
ASAS-SN:
Since August 2020, I am working with the All-Sky Automated Survey for SuperNovae (ASAS-SN) at The Ohio State University as an Analyst/Research Assistant. ASAS-SN regularly surveys the entire visible sky down to g~18 mag using twenty-four 14-cm telescopes distributed around the globe. Working with Professors Kris Stanek and Chris Kochanek, I am responsible for the image quality control of nightly images from the ASAS-SN telescopes and maintaining the discoveries by following up and releasing various transient candidates (supernovae, cataclysmic variables, etc…). ASAS-SN is super cool!
Galaxy Alignments:
Starting in Summer 2019, I worked with Professor Barbara Ryden as part of SURP at OSU, looking at alignments of low redshift galaxies with the local large-scale structures using Legacy Survey data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey DR15. Studying the intrinsic alignments of different classes of galaxies helps reduce the contamination in weak-lensing measurements and helps better understand how different classes of galaxies interact with the large-scale structure influencing their orientations. Our results find that the luminous red galaxies tend to align their major axes parallel with their surrounding distribution of galaxies on scales of 1 to 30 Mpc, whereas the blue galaxies have no preferred alignment on average. From this project, I gathered skills of working with large datasets, SQL queries, and implementing basic parallel processing. This project was the subject of my undergraduate thesis and has now been submitted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The poster and presentation info related to this project can be found here.
Dust-in-plasma simulations:
In Spring 2019, I worked with graduate student Alexander Klepinger and Professor Douglass Schumacher in OSU High Energy Density Physics. This work was focused on simulations of dust particles of different sizes and charges, where a single particle is fixed at the center of a 2D grid in an electron-ion plasma. With set initial conditions, we observed the charge on the dust particle, system energies, and potentials as functions of time. The goal of these simulations was to shed more light on the interaction of dust in plasma which could help better understand plasma shielding and other effects. For this project, I used the Ohio Supercomputer Center to run large simulations and MATLAB for plotting.