I am a PhD student in the Astrophysical Sciences and Technology program, advised by Dr. Richard O'Shaughnessy. I study the outcomes of interactions between massive stars and other stellar-mass objects using population synthesis. I am interested in Thorne-Żytkow objects, which are a proposed outcome of a merger between a massive star and a neutron star companion, and stars in active galactic nuclei (AGN) disks. I am part of the McFACTS development team, which is a public open source population synthesis code designed to model the full AGN channel for binary black hole (BBH) mergers detectable by LIGO, Virgo, and KAGRA. I develop and use McFACTS to analyze the behavior of stars in AGN disks and their impact on merging BBH.

I completed my MSc in Astrophysics at the University of Bonn under Dr. Norbert Langer studying spindown and envelope inflation of massive stars. I completed my BS in Physics at Virginia Tech and worked on analyzing radio counterparts to gravitational wave signals and modeling chemically homogeneous stellar evolution.

Personal website

McFACTS website