Berkeley SETI Research Center REU

As of Summer 2021, I am a mentor for the Berkeley SETI Research Center Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU). I co-mentored three mentees over 10 weeks on projects about pulsed radio signal detection, drift rate distributions from exoplanets, and spatiotemporal SETI searches. All three projects were extremely interesting and successful and we hope to publish their results in major astronomy journals over the next year – stay tuned!

Pulsar Search Collaboratory

As part of my work for the Pulsar Search Collaboratory club at Penn State (based on the Pulsar Search Collaboratory), I am leading a group of undergraduate researchers through a research project on pulsar scintillation. We are using drift-scan pulsar observations of ~160 pulsars to measure the pulsars’ scintillation bandwidths – in short, this tells us about the distribution of gas between Earth and each of the pulsars. These measurements can help us determine if our model of gas distributions throughout the galaxy is correct, or (more likely) where it needs to be improved.

I am extremely privileged to be able to work with such an awesome group of undergraduate researchers, and would love to recommend them for positions / have any chance to brag about their incredible work. Here is a list of my past and present PSC mentees:

Other, not-pictured mentees include Will Fletcher and Emma Koller (PSU alumni)

Cal-URSA Program

As of Fall 2021, I am also a mentor for the UC Berkeley Astronomy Department’s inaugural Cal-URSA (Undergraduate Research Scholarships in Astronomy) program.