About.

01 / How I got here

From nuclear physics
to materials science.

I first became interested in physics during my first year of undergrad at Florida State University. During an Astronomy 101 course, I gradually became captivated by stars and how they generate their energy through nuclear burning. Luckily, FSU had a low-energy nuclear program that studied the same nuclear reactions that power the cosmos. Before the end of that astronomy class, I had switched majors and was ultimately set on the path I am now on.

After FSU, I went on to grad school at the University of Notre Dame, where I studied and performed research under the guidance of Michael Wiescher. Under Dr. Wiescher's guidance, I studied several important (α,p) reactions in Type 1 X-ray bursts.

In 2016, I took a post-doc in the P-27 (now P-3) Low Energy Nuclear Physics group, where I studied (n,α) reactions at the Weapons Neutron Research Center on flight path 15R.

Somewhere during 2018, a very funny thing happened. I got very interested in nuclear energy, and at the same time a staff scientist position opened up in the Materials Science and Technology division that used neutron absorption resonances to non-destructively map out isotopes in nuclear fuels. I was hooked! I am now considered more of a materials scientist, using Energy-Resolved Neutron Imaging to study all sorts of cool and interesting nuclear materials problems in the realm of nuclear engineering.