Research

Current Research Interests

I primarily work on the discovery of ultra-compact binaries using synoptic surveys - especially outbursting AM CVn systems and eclipsing detached white dwarf binaries. The synoptic surveys I primarily work with is the Palomar Transient Factory.

I originally started working with this as a way to find the electromagnetical counterparts to LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) sources. Ultra-compact binaries are known "verification binaries" for LISA. However, even though LISA's future is uncertain, there are many other reasons why these systems are interesting.

To date we have discovered many interesting systems. One has been written, and several more will hopefully be published in the near future.

Past Research Projects

From June 2006 until August 2007 I was a member of the Spitzer/IRS group at Cornell University. I was primarily involved in the development of data reduction software - primarily SMART and the beginnings of its Python successor, PySMART. I also worked a bit on Spitzer/IRS and Palomar/Hale spectroscopic data.

During my summer as an REU student at the LIGO Hanford Observatory I worked under Dr. Keita Kawabe on optical simulations. Because of mirror imperfections, the laser beam in LIGO generally changes shape slightly. Unfortunately, this reduces the signal and Dr. Kawabe made an attempt to build and install an output mode cleaner to remove the offending noise. However, it actually decreased the quality of the signal and my summer project was to attempt to understand why it increased the noise instead of decreasing.

I also spent a summer at Notre Dame where I worked with Professor John Poirier on a redesign of the data acquisition system of his Project GRAND muon telescope.

Finally, as an undergraduate I spent a considerable amount of time taking computer science courses. As a result of that effort, a friend and I were asked by Professor Keshav Pingali and Professor David Schwartz to software for the CS212 Java Practicum Course. The software simulated a simple stack based computer that exposed students to assembly language in an easier fashion than starting with a complicated real-world architecture. The project was a success and we were asked to stay on as teaching assistants for the course until we graduated.