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.

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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)

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For the last four years, I have been running the UCLA Planetarium, which provides free weekly public planetarium shows, as well as free private shows for educational groups. I'm also quite active with UCLA Astronomy Live!, our grad-student-run outreach organization. Each year, we run a fall outreach event, "Exploring Your Universe," providing the Los Angeles community a free day of exciting scientific workshops and programs.

(read more about outreach)

Also, I run a museum. You should come by if you're in the UCLA Astronomy Department.