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My work is generally focused in two areas: (1) Infrared instrumentaion and (2) characterizing supernovae. "Infrared instrumention?," you ask. Well, you can click on the link to find out more. But basically, I want to be part of the community that designs and constructs the necessary equipment for astronomers to carry out their exploration and research. The infrared happens to be an exciting area in Astronomy that allows the user to study the warm dust that dominates our galaxy, to see through the cold dust that may obscure stars and supernovae, and observe the heat produced by colder stars and planets.
I work in Virginia's Astronomical Instrumentation Laboratory, headed by Dr. Michael Skrutskie, former PI to 2MASS. I have the pleasure to work with other characters, such as electrical engineer Dr. Matthew Nelson and mechanical engineer Dr. John Wilson, as well as graduate students Srikrishna Kanneganti and Chan Park. I have collaborated on several projects, including InGaAs detector development and characterization for infrared arrays and the TripleSpec medium resolution infrared spectrograph, scheduled to be commissionaed at Apache Point Observatory in late 2007. Recently, I was awarded a 3-year GSRP fellowship at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Here, I spend half the year characterizing H2RG detectors for the James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Spectrograph.
In addition to my instrumentation work, I have committed myself to writing a thesis and getting out of grad school at some point (although, I must admit sleeping until 11am each day is a nice perk!). My science interest is focused on supernovae. Specifically, I am interested in studying their characteristics in the infrared, their surrounding medium, and possible progenitor systems.
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