Welcome!

I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at the College of Charleston, in Charleston, SC. I teach a variety of astronomy and physics courses to all levels of students, and still do research on stars that explode in some way, usually with a white dwarf at the base.

Previously, I was a Kathryn W. Davis Postdoctoral Fellow studying observational astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. I worked with Mike Shara at AMNH, investigating long-term cataclysmic variable evolution. Additionally, I was a faculty member with the Museum's new MAT program, for which I designed and implemented the astronomy lab practicum part of the curriculum. As a grad student at Louisiana State University, I worked under the direction of Brad Schaefer, looking at recurrent novae and Type Ia supernovae, and the connection between them, a topic I'm still interested in.

Full Moon at CTIO, December 2011. 25sec exposure at 1:00AM local time. From left to right, the domes you can see are the 4m (silver dome), Michigan Schmidt (foreground), SMARTS 1.5m and SMARTS 0.9m. The 4m started slewing in the middle of the exposure, hence the blurriness. I was on the SMARTS 1.0m, and you can just barely see the corner of its building on the left side of the picture.

Last update: December 2018