About Me.
I am an NSF MPS-Ascend postdoctoral fellow at Villanova University, with a secondary affiliation at the University of Washington in Seattle. I completed my PhD in Physics at Drexel University, where my graduate work was funded under a NASA Harrett G. Jenkins graduate research fellowship.
My primary interests are in the timing variability of accreting black holes and neutron stars using data from instruments onboard satellites such as the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer, Swift, MAXI, Kepler, and TESS. I am also currently exploring methods to classify and discover accreting objects from the Zwicky Transient Facility (ZTF) in combination with X-ray and optical spectroscopic follow-up of unique systems. I employ methods from nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory in combination with machine learning to study the abundance of data acquired by ZTF of these exotic systems. My side projects include developing radiation-hydrodynamic simulations of the accretion disks around black holes and exploring interdisciplinary applications of novel time series analysis methods.
I advocate for equity and inclusion of historically marginalized groups in astronomy and physics and founded the Department of Physics at Drexel’s first minorities and women in physics committee which led directly to the establishment of a department-wide Diversity and Inclusion committee. I also enjoy the crossover between physics and the arts and strive to amplify STEAM events. For example, I organized the “Paint Your Research!” splinter session at the AAS Winter Meeting in 2018 (with Virginia Price, pictured here).
