Astrophysics

I spent the majority of my undergrad majoring in Physics and Astronomy before switching to Applied Physics near the end (which allowed me to take more computer science courses), and I was deeply involved in that department as a student, teaching assistant, researcher, and club officer.

Research Focus

My research focused on our ability to figure out how far away galaxies are. This is a difficult problem to solve, and is important when we try to understand how these galaxies formed (which also influences our understanding of dark matter). The standard way to measure galaxy distance is expensive and requires huge telescopes, which isn't feasible in most cases. We developed a new system that we believed would work on smaller telescopes at a fraction of the time and cost.

For my contribution, I took archival data for hundreds of thousands of galaxies and simulated the data we would get if we observed those galaxies using our new filters (this is actually where I first learned SQL and Python). My results showed that we could find galaxy distance at 10x the accuracy of the next best low-cost method. As a result of this research, we invested to have the filters built and tested them out on real telescopes looking at real galaxies, and our observational results exactly matched the simulated results.

Physics Education Research

I also conducted physics education research. Our 100-level astronomy course relied on class projects to get students outside and looking at the night sky, but the projects were outdated and inflexible. I updated these projects to align more closely with modern technology and with course goals.

Publications & Presentations

My Story

If you'd like to hear more about my story and why I left astrophysics, you can listen to me talk about it on this podcast episode (focused primarily on why I'm getting an MBA and what the process was like to get into Kellogg).