Education

Amherst College, Amherst MA                                                                         Expected graduation May 2021

• Physics and Astronomy double major
• Honors thesis, Astronomy
• GPA: 3.7/4.00

Experience

Follette Lab, Amherst College | Amherst, MA                                                                           2018 – present

Research Assistant - Dr. Kate Follette

• Using angular and spectral differential imaging in tandem with the pyKLIP algorithm to search transitional disks for forming exoplanets
• Transition Disk Database Project Lead: coordinated and managed junior researchers in aggregating data and developing a platform for a centralized, public database
• Contributed to GAPlanetS project code (Follette et al. in prep.)

SIOS Lab, Cornell University | Ithaca, NY                                                                June 2020 – August 2020

Research Assistant - Dr. Dmitry Savransky

• Performed space telescope mission yield simulations for Miniaturized Distributed Occulture/Telescope (mDOT) mission
• Contributed to EXOSIMS project code (Savransky et al. 2017)

Physics and Astronomy Department, Amherst College | Amherst, MA                                     2019 – present

Teaching Assistant, Grading Assistant, Observatory operation

• TA for ASTR112 (2019F), ASTR337 (2020F), ASTR341 (2021S)
• Experience performing and communicating data collection/reduction, and telescope setup/operation

Additional Experience/Volunteer Work/etc

Science communication - Amherst STEM Network, personal blog                                     June 2018 – present

Volunteer - Great Falls Books Through Bars                                                              Nov. 2019 – March 2020

Performer - Mr. Gads House of Improv                                                                            Sept. 2017 – present

Director/Producer - “LOL: A Modern Computer Farce” at the Shoebox Theater         Oct. 2015 – June 2016

Presentations

“Exploring the Transition Disk Population with a public facing database” AAS 235th meeting, Jan 7th

Publications

Follette, … Balmer et al. (in prep.)

Awards

Charles Hamilton Houston Program (2020)

Gregory S. Call Award (2019)

Sarles Fellow, Sarles Science Research Fund (2019)

Interests

Academic interests include planetary formation, circumstellar disk evolution, and direct imaging techniques. Published two text-adventure games: You are petting a cat, and Fly Trap

Data Science Skills

• Python: data visualization, preprocessing, analysis. O/IR data reduction.
• Git: version control and collaboration
• LaTeX: academic document preparation, formatting, design