I’m a Postdoctoral fellow at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. I’m interested in using cosmological observations to better understand and constrain fundamental physics, and in studying how we can get as much information as possible out of those observations. I’m also interested in science outreach and in making STEM fields more accessible and welcoming to everyone. I do research as part of the Dark Energy Survey collaboration, where I co-led the analysis team performing a combined analysis of the survey’s first three years of galaxy clustering and weak lensing data to constrain extensions to the standard cosmological model.

I grew up in Romeo, a suburb of Detroit, Michigan. I received my undergraduate degree from Michigan State University, where I did an astrophysics undergrad thesis supervised by Mark Voit. I spent two years at the University of Cambridge as a Marshall Scholar where I completed Part III of the Mathematical Tripos and then spent a year working on modified gravity research with Anne-Christine Davis. I got my PhD at University of Michigan’s Department of Physics, where my advisor was Dragan Huterer. Before I came to Perimeter Institute, I was a Porat Fellow at Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC) at Stanford. where I was part of Risa Wechsler’s galaxy formation and cosmology group.

Education

  • PhD in Physics - University of Michigan, 2018.
  • MPhil in Astronomy - Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, 2013.
  • MASt in Applied Mathematics (Part III) - Gonville and Caius College, University of Cambridge, 2012.
  • B.S. Physics & B.S. Astrophysics - Michigan State University, 2010.

Contact

News and updates

Online talks

For the general public

  • “Conversations at the Perimeter” podcast. As a guest on the Perimeter Insitute’s podcast, I talked about dark energy and how we can learn about it using galaxy surveys like the Dark Energy Survey, as well as making science cartoons, collaborative science, and more. There’s also a youtube video of the discussion linked here.
  • “Mapping the dark side of the Universe” (Public lecture, 1h15m+questions) In March 2023 I presented at a meeting of the Mississauga Centre Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. The talk was in person with a zoom component, and this is a recording of the zoom feed.
  • “Echoes of the Early Universe” (Public lecture, 1hr) - I gave this talk for the general public in July 2020 as part of KIPAC’s online “Discover” series. It’s about the Cosmic Microwave Background, and how we can use measurements of it to learn about the history of the Universe and about fundamental physics.

Technical