Lab Notebook

Fall 2023

I held meetings with many astrophysicists, including Dr. Steve Bryson, who will be my mentor for my project next year.

Spring 2024

I wrote my literature review and am going to make my poster and proposed project on machine learning algorithms.

Summer 2024

School is about to end. I am planning to study python over the summer to prep for a research project with Steve next year.

September 2024

I am meeting with Steve on a weekly basis. I have shifted my focus from machine learning algorithms to analyzing unconfirmed exoplanets, especially those determined false positives. This analysis will be conducted with Python.

October 2024

Steve and I are settling into a rhythm. We are currently working through background information with stellar objects, and will soon move back into exoplanets specifically. Between sessions, I work with NumPy and MatPlotLib to make graphs of various data points against each other, which can be found here.  

December '24

We're gearing up to begin the project. I have reviewed the Leovetter paper draft and taken a look at the thresholds used to determine false positives.

March '25

The project is complete. A section on the Disposition Scores will be included in the final Leovetter paper.

May '25

The paper is nearly done. I have just begun working on the final presentation for the MARC Colloquium.

End of May '25

Presentation ✅; paper ✅.

Both my paper and Colloquium presentation are embedded below. After my two-year MARC journey, the visual culmination of my efforts is a JPEG with 172 data points. I created a program that calculates disposition scores for the LEO-Vetter database of promising planet candidates (PCs), which in turn identified the most promising PCs from the entire TESS database. I made a significant contribution to exoplanet science, and my name will be included in a paper that will be very heavily cited, in which my work will be included as a section. Thank you to Dr. Steve Bryson, Dr. Michelle Kunimoto, Amy Strauss, Dr. Emily Willingham, and all of my MARC classmates of '25.