Outreach & Service
Science communication, community building, and the unglamorous service work that keeps a field functioning.
Talking about this work in public
NPR 1A: a black hole eating a star
I was a guest on National Public Radio's 1A to discuss our work on AT 2021lwx, the one we called “Scary Barbie”, with a general audience. Having to explain a tidal disruption event without any of the usual scaffolding turned out to sharpen how I think about the result itself, and it left me with a lot more respect for the craft of science communication.
Hosting the JWST launch and first light
Around the launch of JWST, the Purdue Department of Physics and Astronomy held a virtual launch party where I served as Master of Ceremony, moderating a panel of six scientists on what the telescope would actually be able to do. The launch party streamed live on YouTube. When the first images arrived, I co-hosted the follow-up event, First Light: A Discussion of the First Images Returned from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Astro On Tap
A bar is an unforgiving venue for a talk about infrared spectroscopy, and a very good place to learn what actually lands. I spoke at Astro On Tap: Cradle of Astronauts about JWST and what it would let us see, and came away convinced that storytelling and a single good image do more work than any amount of detail.
Saturday Morning Astrophysics
SMAP works with students in grades 7–12 on current research topics, their historical background, and the physics underneath them. I volunteered throughout graduate school, and during the pandemic taught a virtual lesson on Stellarium with Jack Reynolds. Teaching a fourteen-year-old to find a nebula from their bedroom is a decent test of whether you understand the sky yourself.
Building communities
Women in Science Program, 2020–2023
WISP is a platform for graduate students across STEM at Purdue to network and support each other. As the Graduate WISP leadership member and liaison for the Department of Physics and Astronomy, I designed and ran a monthly seminar series with invited speakers on professional development and scientific topics, and mentored undergraduate and graduate women in STEM. Supporting women and underrepresented groups in this field is something I intend to keep doing wherever I land.
President, Physics Graduate Student Association, 2022–2023
As PGSA president I ran professional development, academic support and social programming for the department's graduate students. The job was mostly listening: graduate students want very different things from a department, and the useful work was in making room for that rather than assuming a single answer.
I also served on the Scientific Organizing Committee for the 2022 Spoken-WERDD Symposium, coordinating abstracts, scheduling, and the symposium's code of conduct.
Academic service
Nature Astronomy, Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, and Astronomy & Astrophysics.
HST Cycles 33–34, JWST Director's Discretionary time, NASA panels.
Spoken-WERDD Symposium.