“Knowledge is an unending adventure at the edge of uncertainty.”
– Frank Herbert, Children of Dune

Hi there!  This website is intended as a professional blog of my research and experiences as a graduate student.  I hope to use this platform to share accomplishments as well as anything else that may be inspiring or educational.  Learning is a journey, and science is the ultimate adventure!

My primary research interest is ice core paleoclimatology, in which scientists like myself try to extract information from glacial ice to learn more about Earth’s climate history.  I am currently working on two projects: (1) determining the climatological drivers of the stable isotope signals in ice cores from the Peruvian Andes, and (2) using the Huascarán ice cores to reconstruct the mineralogical history of dust deposited on the world’s highest tropical mountain.

To tackle the first problem, I work with gridded climate data sets and use scripting languages such as MATLAB, Python, and Julia to detect statistical connections between observational records and the signals preserved in ice cores.  For the second problem, I use a technique called energy dispersive spectrometry to determine the mineralogical composition of individual dust grains.  I am also working to develop machine learning protocols that speed-up and improve the accuracy of the classification workflow.