I am an STScI Scientist who joined the Hubble Space Telescope STIS team in 2016 to help maintain the continued health and performance of STIS. In 2020, I became the team lead for STIS, and I am both excited and honored to care for one of the two instruments that provide ultraviolet spectroscopy to the astronomical community. For my research, I study red giant stars in search of ones that have devoured their planets. Come explore my pages to learn more about what I do.
Red giant stars can be tricky to study. Low and intermediate mass stars look nearly identical as red giants, yet their histories have been drastically different and their centrail cores will continue to evolve under very different conditions. Studies of giants in clusters or large surveys of field stars (e.g., APOGEE) are needed to understand them.
Over the years, I have had the opportunity to share my love of astronomy with many people. I especially loved my time working with the Dark Skies, Bright Kids program when I was a graduate student at at the University of Virginia. From 2013 to 2018, I visited the National Air and Space Museum, in Washington, DC nearly every month to chat with visitors "about anything in the universe" at one of the Astronomy Chat events.
Image credit: Genevieve de Messieres