About

I grew up in Boise, Idaho and completed my undergraduate degree at Boise State University, majoring in physics and applied mathematics with a minor in computer science. In the fall of 2016 I entered the graduate program in Astronomy at the University of Washington. I'm also a member of UW's Astrobiology program, through which I'm working to complete a dual-title PhD in astronomy and astrobiology. In addition to my research, I also help to organize and occasionally speak at Seattle's Astronomy on Tap and manage the UW Planetarium.

Research

I'm working to mitigate the effects of stellar variability that act to obscure exoplanet transits and RV signals. Stellar activity gives rise to variations in both flux and radial velocity that imprint themselves onto the planet's signal. This variability can be modeled as a Gaussian process. I'm interested in developing and applying multi-dimensional GP noise techniques to this problem in order to further increase the sensitivity of future exoplanet searches.

Because our ability to understand exoplanets depends on our understanding of the stars they orbit, I'm also interested in understanding stars. I'm currently working on a project to accurately measure stellar rotation signals for the entire K2 dataset. In the future I hope to apply tools developed for this project to the TESS sample.

For more information on my current projects, see my research page.