Research

This is a summary page about my research. Click the title of each for a more detailed page.

Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman)

They main focus of my work over the past two years has been on predictions for the Roman Galactic Bulge Time Domain Surevy. Microlensing searches for exoplanets are sensitive to those in wider orbits (1-10 times that of the Earth’s orbit). It is senstive to the mass-ratio of the planet and the star, so extra observations are required to obtain a true mass of the planet. This will be the first space-based microlensing survey, and it promises to ‘complete the exoplanet census’, or at least be a great compliment to the Kepler survey.

MINERVA

During my undergrad and a break year, I worked with the MINature Exoplanet Radial Velocity Array (MINERVA). The observatory is aimed to search for exoplanets using the radial velocity (RV) technique. I worked on a lot of the automation and operation of the robotic observatory, and learned a lot about instrumentation in astronomy.

SUPERNOVAE PROGENITORS

I have done research on supernovae, as well. Using Large Binocular Telescope data, I worked with Chris Kochanek on extracting photometry of supernovae progenitors in the final years before the exploded. We were able to place constraints on their brightness variations.