About

I'm from Chicago, Illinois, USA, which is great because I love deep-dish pizza. I did K-8 on the city's northwest side and always liked math and science. Homework at home ... not quite as much. For 9-12 I got into one of Chicago's magnet high schools which was cool. I had physics for the first time there and started working in retail towards the end. Community college came next. I'm forever happy about that decision: finished my associate's degree a semester early using AP Tests and CLEP Exams. Look into those.

After the nice break I enrolled at Northeastern Illinois University. My schedule was rough because I took classes during the week and worked overnight in a hospital IT department on weekends. But I managed and got my BA in Applied Mathematics, paying for college myself without loans. I traveled, thought, and prepped before deciding to apply to grad schools for Physics and Astronomy. I got into several and among those chose Northwestern. Hard but fun! First I did biophysics with John Marko and was happy to stay ... until I got very down from the department qualifying exams and had to change something.

That's when I switched to exoplanets and (helped by Fred Rasio) began researching with Nick Cowan. It was also about the time I started teaching through GK-12, first at Evanston Township High and later at Lincoln Junior High. Nick ended up at McGill University in Montreal, and I joined as a visiting student to finish my degree. With a bunch of bouncing around in between, I defended my thesis on Exoplanet Characterization and earned my PhD. After the Defense, I stayed on at McGill as a postdoc, then headed back to Chicago for self-imposed independent time.

Now, I've done interesting contract work in radiology, kept peer reviewing for scientific journals, and do private tutoring in a variety of science and math subjects. I especially enjoy volunteering and working with middle schools in Niles Township: STEM classes, robotics teams, summer programs and more. And for whatever follows — research, data science, teaching, or the unpredictable — I'm excited. 😃

Thanks to my parents who I try helping stay healthy, pandemics or not; my younger sister who does speech-language pathology and loves the outdoors; and my older brother, a Grand Canyon ranger who's been to a few places.