Hello,

I am a National Science Foundation (NSF) Astronomy & Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellow and Simonyi-NSF Scholar at Michigan State University, and will begin as an assistant professor in August 2025. I am also the NASA Small Bodies Assessment Group (SBAG) Early Career Secretary and a member of the Rubin Observatory Users Committee. If you are interested in research opportunities, please contact me.

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About Me

I received my Ph.D. from Yale University in 2020, where I worked with Gregory Laughlin and was a Gruber Fellow. I graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2015, with degrees in mathematics and physics.

I was the TC Chamberlin Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago Department of the Geophysical Sciences from 2020-2022 and then a postdoc and NSF Simonyi Scholar/AAPF at Cornell from 2022-2024.

I primarily study theoretical and computational planetary science and astrophysics. I am generally interested in fluid dynamics, nonlinear dynamics, plasma physics and neuroscience.

Research Highlights

Solar System Comets & Asteroids

Solar System Comets & Asteroids
Interstellar Objects

Interstellar Objects
Solar and Stellar Astrophysics

Solar and Stellar Astrophysics
Volcanism on Exoplanets

Volcanism on Exoplanets
Protoplanetary Disks

Protoplanetary Disks

Outreach, Teaching, and Leadership Experiences

  • Aster Taylor (2022 - Present): Undergraduate Senior Thesis Primary Advisor at the University of Chicago. Currently a Hertz Fellow at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

    Devin Hoover (2021 - 2023): Undergraduate Senior Thesis Primary Advisor at the University of Chicago. Currently a graduate student at the University of Arizona.

    Marvin Morgan (2020 - 2021): Undergraduate Senior Thesis Co-Advisor at the University of Pennsylvania. Currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Texas, Austin.

  • I am a co-founder of OpenLabs, a science outreach organization of graduate and professional students devoted to educating and mentoring young scholars, and encouraging them to pursue careers in the sciences. We focus on 6-12th grade students, because this is a crucial time in their development of critical thinking and empirical skills that will propel them towards science careers. We are currently based at Yale Unviersity, Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton University, and Columbia University. If you are interested in OpenLabs, or would like to start a chapter, please check out our website and feel free to contact me!

  • Astro 155 - Yale University - Professor Michael Faison - Observational Astronomy Lab - I assisted undergraduates with data collection using the Leitner telescope facilities.

    Astro 160 - Yale University - Professor Louise Edwards - Frontiers and Controversies in Astrophysics - we used an innovative flipped classroom approach for our 152 person lectures, interacting with the students via novel demonstrations and in-class activities.

    Astro 105 - Yale University - Professor Gregory Laughlin Earth in its Cosmic Context -I had the pleasure to teach this course with my advisor Greg Laughlin. We aimed to teach our students how to do order of magnitude estimates in the context of astronomy. I designed original material for my section; for example, I designed an in classroom activity in which we estimated how many gallons of air we breath out in a day, by estimating how many breaths it takes to fill a balloon and then estimating the volume of a balloon.

  • SBAG Early Career Secretary (2023 - Present)

    Colloquium Committee, University of Chicago Department of the Geophysical Sciences (2021)

    Scientific and Local Organizing Committee Member, Emerging Researchers in Exoplanet Science (ERES) Conference III (2018)

    Founder and organizer of the Yale Exoplanet Journal Club (2016 - 2019)