Since April 2020 I am a doctoral student at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy. I'm working with Paul Molliere and Laura Kreidberg to advance our understanding of exoplanet atmospheres and to improve the tools with which they study them. Working with the ExoGRAVITY team I use state-of-the-art instrumentation in order to determine atmospheric properties and evolutionary history of the HR 8799 system. To do this I help develop the retrieval tools for petitRADTRANS. After the launch of JWST, I am particularly interested in characterizing atmospheres in the mid infrared in order to better understand their cloud properties.
I completed my Master's of Physics at ETH Zurich in March 2020, under the supervision of Sascha Quanz as a member of the Exoplanets and Habitability group. My thesis involved investigating the impact of instrumental effects from the MIRI MRS on atmospheric parameters retrieved from spectra of Jupiter-like planets and brown dwarfs. I also completed a semester project for Judit Szulagyi on the analysis of hydrodynamic simulation data for circumstellar and circumplanetary disks, and implemented the PACO algorithm as a module in VIP-HCI. I completed my Bachelor's of Physics at the University of Waterloo in 2018. During my time at Waterloo, I wrote my bachelor's thesis on the analysis of filaments in interstellar gas clouds and their role in star formation. Through the co-operative education program, I also spent several semesters as a research assistant for various groups, including DEAP-3600, nEXO and ERIS.
Apart from astronomy, I'm an avid musician and photographer, and enjoy travelling around the world to learn about new cultures and people.
I'm mostly interested in exoplanet observation and characterization, trying to learn about atmospheric composition and structure and what this can tell us about the climate and formation history of the planet. I have worked with both ground-based and space based observatories, and hope to continue to push the boundaries of our observational capabilities using next generation telescopes.
In the long term we are working towards identifying biosignatures on exoplanets, but I'm also concerned with the biosphere on our own planet. I support Astronomers for Planet Earth, and hope to continue working to better our stewardship of our own environment.
C/O? More like C/No! Why retrievals don't solve everything. Exoclimes VI. (2023).
Four of a Kind: HR8799. Exploring the atmospheres of the HR 8799 system with GRAVITY Spirit of Lyot. (2022).
Four of a Kind: HR8799. Sagan Summer School. (2021).
Atmospheric Retrievals with MIRI. Leiden Observatory. (2020).
The MIRI MRS can be used to measure the C/O ratio of sub-stellar atmospheres. Tackling the Complexities of Substellar Objects: From Brown Dwarfs to (exo-)Planets. (2020).
Visualising JUPITER Hydrodynamic Simulations using Paraview and VTK. ETH Zurich Semesterarbeit. (2019).
Data Processing for Filaments. Bachelor's Thesis Presentation, University of Waterloo. (2018).
The ERIS instrument for the VLT 5th EIROForum School of Instrumentation. (2017).
Afterpulsing in DEAP-3600 PMTs DEAP-3600 Collaboration Meeting. (2016).