My first year at Princeton has involved a mixed dating approach of a variety of MSA-LSA archaeological sites in South Africa, Eastern Africa, and the Middle East. As I continue to pursue my research at Princeton I hope to incorporate a greater scope of geochronological method development that can be used in a variety of archaeological and paleoanthropological sites.

My undergraduate senior thesis focused on the geochemistry and Argon-argon dating of the volcanic deposits of the Late Pleistocene archaeological site Mochena Borago Rockshelter. Mochena Borago has important ties to key transitions between early hunter-gatherer technologies between 12ka to >75ka that have not been well-dated past the radiocarbon limit which limits dating older than ~50 ka.. My thesis worked to address (1) target dateable materials in MB and the surrounding area; (2) identify potential correlations across past & current MB excavations; (3) clarify the nature of nearby volcanic occurrences and (4) identify types of igneous material available for hunter-gatherer use.

In June 2021 was hired as a laboratory technician and then promoted to research scientist through my involvement with GreenTechnologies LLC's Phase One of their USDA SBIR Research grant to study energy-efficient fertilizers and their NPK ratios. This work involved a mix of chemical analyses through leachate, soil, tissue, and EDX analyses as well as physical characterizations of the fertilizers through SEM. 

Another facet of my work affiliated with UF Chemistry and GreenTechnologies was zirconium phosphate absorbency analyses. Zirconium phosphate has a predisposition to absorb phosphate in water when properly motivated and is a potential way to absorb phosphate pollutants in waterways in the future. This particular methodology used here is patented and still in its development phase.

As a laboratory tech for Dr. Sprain, I worked in the Argon-argon dating laboratory and the Rock Magnetism Laboratory.  I prepared Argon-argon dating samples and X-ray diffraction (XRD) geochemical samples collected from the Sprain lab group's 2020 field season. I also collected rock magnetism data through the vibrating-sample magnetometer (VSM) within the Rock Magnetism laboratory to typify the same materials' magnetic signatures.