Welcome to my Web page!
Welcome to my webpage! I'm a graduate researcher in the Homer L. Dodge Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Oklahoma, currently based at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD. As a member of Dr. John Wisniewski's research group at OU, I study circumstellar disks and activity on low-mass stars. At GSFC, I work with Dr. Marc Kuchner on Disk Detective, a citizen science project to identify new circumstellar disks in the WISE catalog.
I use an assortment of observational techniques with ground- and space-based telescopes to identify potential planet-forming and planet-hosting systems. I also use existing and newly-written modeling codes to constrain their intrinsic characteristics, such as the temperature of the circumstellar material. I also observe and characterize the surface activity (e.g. flares and starspots) of low-mass stars to better understand their potential effect on the habitability of planets around these stars.
News
Disk Detective won time on Gemini-South! We'll be acquiring optical spectra of some new Peter Pan disk candidates. Details coming soon.
Disk Detective Paper 3 (Silverberg et al. 2018) was accepted by the Astrophysical Journal. Read a pre-print version of it here. My post about it on the Disk Detective blog is up as well.
Disk Detective won time on SOFIA, and I flew along! Read all about it here.
Peter Pan Disks: A New Kind of Disk
My paper on the discovery of WISEA J080822.18-6444357.3, was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal Letters. Read it here.
NCAD 6
I helped organize and presented at the sixth National Capital Area Disks meeting on July 26-27, 2016. Read more about it here.
Disk Detective Paper 1
The first paper from the Disk Detective project was just published in The Astrophysical Journal. Click here to read more about using citizen science to identify new circumstellar disk systems.
Characterizing 11 Months of Flares on GJ 1243
My masters thesis, characterizing the flare behavior of the active M dwarf GJ 1243, was recently published in The Astrophysical Journal. Read it here.