I am a sixth year graduate student in the UCLA Department of Astronomy. My interests lie in high-redshift AGNs and star-forming galaxies, exploring how the central active galaxy grows with the host galaxy, under the guidance of Dr. Alice Shapley. Before I came to UCLA, I was an undergraduate at Harvey Mudd College, where I worked with Dr. Ann Esin and Dr. Donald Hoard identifying T Tauri stars in the young open cluster Berkeley 87.
A Rest-frame UV composite spectrum was created and analyzed for 33 UV-selected z~2-3 AGNs from the LBG survey. The composite spectrum is compared to a composite for non-AGNs from Shapley et al. 2003, and high velocity (~850 km/s) outflows are shown for highly-ionized gas. These results represent the first such comparison at high redshift between star-forming galaxies and similar galaxies that host AGN activity. (Hainline et al. 2011)
Rest-frame optical spectra are presented for three strongly-lensed star-forming galaxies, the Cosmic Horseshoe (z = 2.38), the Clone (z = 2.00), and SDSS J090122.37+181432.3 (z = 2.26). The magnification allows for a measurement of a full complement of high S/N rest-frame optical emission lines, which can be used to calculate metallicity and ionization state of the gas in these galaxies. (Hainline et al. 2009)