What year are you in?
6th Year and Successfully defended my dissertation on Feb 26.
What group are you in?
High Energy Astroparticle Physics with James Beatty as my advisor.
Where are you from?
I was born and raised in Miami, FL. My family is from Nicaragua
Describe your research in 200 words or fewer.
I study Cosmic Rays between the energy of 3 – 100 PeV using data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. Cosmic rays are nuclei that were discovered in 1912 and a century later we are still learning about them such as their origin, propagation, and mass composition. For the energy I’m looking at, cosmic rays are fairly rare so we use surface detectors to detect extensive air showers (EAS) initiated by a cosmic ray interacting with our atmosphere. For my research, I use methods such as signal processing, and machine learning methods to extract parameters describing EAS. This includes the energy and maximum depth (Xmax) which when used together are sensitive to the mass composition.
What have you done in physics that you are most proud of?
During my time here at OSU, I was most proud of contributing to the IceCube Neutrino Observatory where I helped maintain and develop code for the software used for analysis and simulations. I implemented code that would help address cable shadow in simulations. I am also proud of a model I developed that reconstructed the Xmax and energy of cosmic rays which had not been done at IceCube before.
What have you done outside of physics that you are most proud of?
Outside of physics, I am most proud of my contributions to the ASPIRE program that was founded and organized by CCAPP and Dr. Amy Connolly. ASPIRE is a summer camp program for high school girls between 10th and 12th grade. I participated as a volunteer and organizer. I was grateful for the opportunity to shape the minds of tomorrow and introducing students to real research environments.
What are your future goals?
I am happy to say that I have taken a position at the Bank of America as a Data Scientist – Assistant Vice President where I will be working on state-of-the-art models for Automatic Speech Recognition. This is a dream come true and I will be relocating to Charlotte, NC later this year.