"Astronomers tend to find physics useful but sterile; physicists tend to find astronomy messy and mired in detail." - F. Chromey, To Measure the Sky. Whether the sentiment is universal or not, this line still elicits a chuckle from me whenever I think on it. I certainly find myself quite enamored of the "mess and mire" of astrophysics research.

I'm currently a postdoctoral research associate working with Dr. Emilia Järvelä in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Texas Tech University. I obtained my Ph.D. in physics/astronomy working with Dr. Richard M. Plotkin at the University of Nevada, Reno. 

To date, most of my research experience has focused on using multiwavelength observations to identify signatures of super-Eddington (i.e., very rapid) accretion in active galactic nuclei (AGNs). The presence of supermassive black holes in the early Universe suggests that some seed black holes grew very quickly through mergers and/or episodes of super-Eddington accretion, but confirmation of such growth yet eludes us. The study of super-Eddington accretion is therefore of prime importance to our understanding of the Universe and its underlying physics!

However, to understand how black holes can grow through episodes of super-Eddington accretion, we need observational constraints on how such episodes affect the physics of AGN central engines -- in particular, how much accretion power may be advected directly into the black hole vs. radiated away or ejected by outflows. At Eddington ratios above ~30%, the inner accretion disk is believed to transition into a geometrically thick and radiatively inefficient 'slim' disk. This change can facilitate the onset of super-Eddington accretion, and it likely alters the structure and output (both radiation and mass outflow) of the central engine and surrounding regions. 

My work has produced observational support for slim disks in nearby samples of AGNs via tests across radio, optical, ultraviolet, and X-ray bands, using data from observatories such as the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, Hubble Space Telescope, and Chandra X-ray Observatory. Currently, I am working on a project to diagnose the origin of core radio emission in high-Eddington AGNs. Going forward, I hope to continue to study the interactions between emission mechanisms in varied AGN populations and better our understanding of how black holes may grow through accretion.

I'm also interested in astronomy instrumentation and astrophotography; as described here.