CV & Highlights

I'm currently a NASA Postdoctoral Program (NPP) Fellow working at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center with Dr. Jane Rigby. I was hired under the JWST-specific call for the NPP, so I get to work on just JWST data — both as part of the big collaborations I'm in and as a collaborator on various awarded programs spanning many cycles. The data are amazing, yall. Recently, I was awarded telescope time on JWST for a Cy3 proposal that I co-lead, which is exciting!

If you'd like to learn a little more about what I'm doing as an NPP fellow, recently I was featured in Goddard's Early Career Scientist Spotlights which you can read about through the link below.

• NASA ECSS article

I have served as a JWST subject matter expert (SME) for NASA's outreach team for a few years. During graduate school, as an SME I was connected to various institutions in and around Texas that were hosting various JWST-related science outreach events. Right before JWST launched in Dec 2021, I gave an SPS Distinguished Public Lecture as part of Texas Lutheran University's Family Physics Night event.

• watch lecture

Now that I work at NASA, I do all sorts of SME outreach related to JWST, including science podcasts, interviews, and invited lectures. I recently gave an invited lecture at the Houston Museum of Natural Science, celebrating the first year of observations with JWST. I'll share the link to that lecture as soon as it's public.

I received the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship in Spring 2018. The application process the previous fall had been a stressful but rewarding experience. When I first expressed interest in applying, I was told by some faculty to not even bother – that only Ivy Leagues & West Coast R1 institutions ever got it. Thankfully I'm very stubborn and had a very supportive advisor (thanks, Casey Papovich!) so I did it anyway.

I've written up some of my personal experience & advice for this process, as well as sharing my application statements and linking a ton of past & current NSF Fellows whose resources I leaned on heavily.

• NSF advice & resources

In Sept & Oct 2019, I was a Visting Scholar at the W. M. Keck Observatory in Waimea, Hawai'i. I proposed to work on testing and upgrades to the MOSFIRE NIR spectrograph – the very one I use extensively for all of my research.

If you'd like to read more about my work there, I have an SPIE paper! Check out more details and the link to my GitHub repo for this work on my Research page.

I am the Editing Director for an international team running the #UniqueScientists project. This project was first conceived when a friend faced archaic prejudices for what a scientist should look like and decided to change that. The goal of #UniqueScientists is to normalize and celebrate how diverse and unique every single scientist is — in the hopes that 1) every day those with prejudices find a less and less welcoming place for their archaic and hateful words, and 2) everyone can find a scientist that looks like them and feel that anything is possible.

We are currently on a hiatus, but we hope to revamp soon!

• link to website

I co-founded the Society for the Under-represented in Physics & Astronomy (SUPA) in 2016 to answer a need in our department for community & representation for our under-represented peoples. After a four years, I stepped down from leadership and finished out grad school as a regular member of the group.

SUPA's mission: To bring together and provide support for diverse peoples to create and foster an inclusive and engaged community. To create a space for free communication among diverse groups to promote support and community.

• SUPA's website