I am a graduate student at the University of California Santa Cruz in the Laboratory for Adapative Optics. I focus on instrumentation for adaptive optics and high contrast imaging -- developing and testing the technology that will allow us to directly image faint planets near bright host stars with ground-based telescopes. The focuses of my PhD are predictive wavefront control, visible light adaptive optics, and polarimetric imaging of substellar companions.

In my past lives I have been a software engineer in the Russell B Makidon Optics Laboratory, a member of the Wide Field Camera 3 HST Instrument Team, worked on transit spectroscopy, and developed exoplanet observation planning tools for the James Webb Space Telescope. A fascination with tools (both software and hardware) will always be a core part of my science.

I am queer and nonbinary. I think that queer identities should have a prominent place in the world of astronomy, software engineering, and generally in science. I started Tufts University's chapter of out in STEM, as well as Space Telescope's LGBT lunch series, SpaceGAYs, and served as a member of the American Astronomical Society's committee for Sexual and Gender Minorities in Astronomy. Wherever I find myself, I advocate for queer people in astronomy, even if it's just through lunch.