Category: News

According to her adoption paperwork, Marlowe was born on May 17, 2011. She was surrendered to the Seattle Humane Society for the first time on December 9, 2016 due to a “change in living situation.” Her intake forms note that she had runny eyes and a history of “eye problems” that had been treated at previous clinics. She was also… Read more →

I hate fires. I hate everything about them. After our second *winter* wildfire scare here in Colorado, I re-evaluated our evacuation plan yet again and thought I’d write down a few suggestions of things to do *well in advance* of any evacuation. Take a weekend. Do the things. Get a grab-bag (preferably a water and fireproof one) of important documents… Read more →

I’m happy to announce that I was selected as one of this year’s NASA Hubble Postdoctoral Fellows and will be starting at Harvard University in Fall 2022! I’ve additionally accepted the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory’s Center for Astrophysics Postdoctoral Fellowship and will combine that with the Hubble for 5 years of postdoctoral experience at the CfA! Moving plans are still TBD,… Read more →

I’m thrilled to announce that I was awarded the University of Washington’s Distinguished Dissertation Award for Mathematics, Physical Sciences, & Engineering! Thanks so much to my advisor, Emily Levesque, and the UW astronomy department for the nomination. As part of the nomination process, I wrote a 2 page summary of my research for a science-inclined general audience. Here is a… Read more →

June 2021 has officially been the month of many (okay, three) conferences! Last week, I was an invited speaker at the American Astronomical Society’s meeting-in-a-meeting on Thorne-Żytkow objects. My thesis advisor, Emily Levesque, was given the opportunity to chose a meeting topic as part of being awarded the Pierce Prize and invited a bunch of astronomers (including Kip Thorne and… Read more →

On the morning of February 25th, 2021, I successfully defended my PhD dissertation entitled, “The Binary Fraction of Red Supergiants” based on my work done at the University of Washington with advisor Dr. Emily Levesque over the past three and a half years. I was initially nervous and a little disappointed that I would have to defend over Zoom as… Read more →

I’m thrilled to announce that I’ve accepted a postdoc position at the University of Toronto as a Dunlap Fellow with a tentative start date of September 1, 2021! Once we’re vaccinated, Garrett and I (and Meg and Marlowe) will be moving to Toronto, Canada for a few years while I explore more massive star research. While I’m a little apprehensive… Read more →

Come check out my Dissertation Talk on The Binary Fraction of Red Supergiants at the 2021 Virtual AAS Meeting! I’ll be talking on Monday, January 11th at 12:50 PM ET during Session 119 “Evolved and Variable Stars.” I’m Presentation #119.05 D! See you there! Read more →

Usually I post about my astronomy-related activities, but I thought I’d put up a post about what I’ve been doing while staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic (spoiler alert: lots of baking and knitting). Living in Seattle, life changed for us pretty early. My last “normal” day in the office was Wednesday, March 4th, 2020. By the time I got… Read more →

This week I attended my first entirely virtual conference! It was put on by the MOBSTER collaboration and focused mainly on stellar variability and magnetic fields of massive stars (conference website). I was invited to give a contributed talk on Binary Red Supergiants which had very little to do with either stellar variability or magnetic fields … oops! The format… Read more →