About Me

Education:

I completed my Bachelor's in Physics at The Pennsylvania State University from 2017-2021. Currently, I am a Ph.D. student at University of Pittsburgh and expect to graduate in 2027.

Research Interests:

My current research is on emission line galaxy selection for DESI-2 using photometric redshifts from COSMOS2020. For this project, I am working with Dr. Jeffrey Newman and Dr. Brett Andrews at the University of Pittsburgh.

Publications: Coming soon to an archive near you!

Research

DESI will produce the largest three-dimensional map of the universe to date in order to better understand the nature of dark energy, responsible for the universe's accelerated expansion. To trace the expansion history, DESI will measure the redshift of millions of galaxies by the end of the five-year survey. In cosmology, redshift is a proxy for distance. One type of galaxy DESI will target are Emission-line Galaxies (ELGs), which have strong emission features that make measuring redshifts easier. The focus of my work has been to design and test better ELG selections for future DESI-like surveys with the aid of better imaging. The histogram above shows the spectroscopic redshift (spec-z) distribution of current DESI ELGs (grey) and two other samples (blue/orange) I have optimized for future spectroscopic surveys, with the dashed vertical lines indicating the intended redshift of the samples between 1.1 and 1.6. Compared to the current ELGs, my selection yields much denser samples with higher efficiency in the fraction of galaxies in the correct redshift range. Combining current DESI ELGs with either sample would reduce random errors by about a factor of two and help provide stronger cosmological constraints.

Community

Teaching: Teaching is something I am very passionate about. During my undergrad at Penn State, I tutored physics and mathematics. In addition to this, I became a learning assistant for a modern physics course where I encouraged independent learning to the students. I plan to teach as a teaching assistant during my time at the University of Pittsburgh before graduation.

Outreach: I consider myself an advocate for higher education. After my first year of undergrad, I went back to my high school and gave a talk to seniors on "The Importance of College". Recently, in the summer of 2022, I gave a talk on "Optimizing the College Experience" to a group of incoming Penn State freshmen.