I am a Department of Energy Computational Sciences Graduate Fellow and current Ph.D. student at the Princeton University Department of Astrophysical Sciences. I use simulations to understand the physics of transients, a class of astrophysical phenomena which change brightness over human timescales (< years) such as supernovae, gamma ray bursts, and compact object mergers. These energetic events often produce multi-messenger signals i.e. electromagnetic radiation, gravitational radiation, cosmic rays.
The current decade promises to be a golden age of transient astronomy, with new instruments like the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Simulations are an excellent tool for understanding how these events work because they often involved coupled non-linear physics. One of my main research interests is tidal disruption events (TDEs), where a star is torn apart by the tidal field of a supermassive black hole (SMBH). Recently, I've also done work on galaxy formation at cosmic dawn and non-local-thermal-equilibrium effects in kilonovae ejecta.
Outside of research, I am a triathlete and a jazz pianist. Follow me on Strava and reach out if you want to jam.
Feel free to contact me for collaboration or outreach purposes!
I grew up in Evanston, IL just North of Chicago where I attended Evanston Township High School (ETHS). During my junior and senior years at ETHS, I worked with Alexander "Sasha" Tchekhovskoy (Northwestern University) to analyze simulations of TDEs in the general relativistic magnetohydrodynamics code H-AMR. I presented this work as posters at the 2018 and 2019 Blue Waters Symposium for Petascale Science and Beyond and as an invited talk at the 19th meeting of the High Energy Astrophysics Division.