Gravitational-Wave Astrophysicist
&
Gravitational Theorist
Compact objects, like black holes, are challenging to study with traditional EM astronomy. Gravitational wave astronomy opens a new window on the universe, giving us the ability to see how the behemoths at the centers of galaxies interact.
My undergraduate degree is in environmental and forest biology from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, which led me to work as a conservation biologist in the High Sierra Mountains of California. Gravity attracted me back to school at Oregon State University, where during my MS degree I studied the conformal structure of spacetime and traversable wormholes. During my PhD at Utah State University I studied gravitational gauge theories and constructed a theory of gravity similar to general relativity, where time and dark matter were emergent properties of the theory. Since then I have honed my data analysis skills as a postdoctoral fellow, searching for the signature of gravitational waves in the signals from millisecond pulsars.