About Me

Education:
B.S. Astrophysics and Mathetmatics @ University of Oklahoma
Masters of Physics @ University of Connecticut
(in progress) PhD @ University of Connecticut

Research Interests: I am interested in supermassive black hole (SMBH) properties and SMBH binary systems. Looking to work on the relationship between electromagnetic observations of gravitational wave producing systems.

Publications: None so far!

Research

plot showing the photometric SED of object MRK841 and two models. One is an iron k-alpha model that doesn't fit well, the other is an MCMC found model that does fit well but is redder than the original iron-k-alpha one.

A New Multiwavelength Approach to Measuring Supermassive Black Hole Spin
Black hole spin is one of the primary factors that determine the behavior of supermassive black hole (SMBH) accretion disks in AGN. So far, SMBH spin measurements have primarily been made by measuring broadening in Fe Kα X-ray reflection emissions (6-7 keV); however, these results may be subject to high column densities near the ISCO of the SMBH mimicking spin effects. This work aims to circumvent this issue by modeling UV and Optical SEDs using QSOSED to measure the best-fit spin for an object of a given mass and Eddington accretion rate. We obtained UV and optical data from SWIFT and LCO for 20 low-redshift (z<0.5) AGN with Fe Kα spin measurements, which we compare to our best-fit results. We find that on average, X-ray reflection methods overestimate spin.
Publication coming soon! Want to be notified when it comes out? Sign up here!

NANOGrav 15 year targeted search for continuous gravitational waves
Using the NANOGrav 15 year data along with enterprise MCMC and QuickCW codes to search for detections of continuous nHz gravitational waves (GWs) from SMBH binaries and place upper limits on GW frequency and mass on potential sources for non-detections.

Community

group photo of the UConn Stars members at Hartford Public High School

Teaching:
University of Connecticut,
(Spring 2026 - Present) Graduate Certificate for College Instruction
(Summer 2026 - Present) CIRTL@Uconn : Practioner -> Scholar
(Spring 2023- Spring 2026) PHYS 1501: Calculus Based Physics 1 for Engineers
(Fall 2022) PHYS 1502: Calculus Based Physics 2 for Engineers
Noble High School, Noble, OK
(Fall 2021-Spring 2022)
Physical Science: General education physics and chemistry topics
Physics: Science elective algebra based mechanics
Astronomy: Science elective astronomy with citizen science labratories

Outreach:
UConn STARs Initiative

Equity & Inclusion: