I am a fifth year PhD student working with Annika Peter on observational and theoretical work relating to dwarf galaxies. I received a bachelor’s degree in astrophysics from Haverford College where I did my thesis with Beth Willman on variable stars in the Hercules dwarf galaxy (here).
Ongoing and completed projects include searching for dwarf satellites of sub-MW mass hosts using LBT imaging and comparing to theoretical predictions (here) and assessing how satellites of low-mass hosts have their star formation quenched (here). I also contribute significantly to the MADCASH collaboration, which is conducting a survey for satellites of low-mass hosts in the Local Volume with the Hyper-Suprime Camera on the Subaru Telescope. A list of my publications can be found here. I have participated in OSU’s ASPIRE program by designing activities and volunteering to help teach sessions and am currently assisting with developing a dark-matter-themed planetarium show.
As both an observer and a theorist, I am interested in topics generally related to doing cosmology with dwarf galaxies. On the observational side, this requires deep and wide optical imaging, for which I have analyzed data from DECam / Blanco, LBC / LBT, and HSC / Subaru. I am especially excited for the advances that will be made when the Vera Rubin Observatory comes online. However, making optimal use of those data requires robust theoretical predictions against which we can compare. For this reason I have been doing more theory lately, especially focused on making predictions for the low-redshift satellite luminosity functions of low-mass hosts using N-body simulations, semi-analytic and semi-empirical models.