CV

Education

• 2022 – 2026

  B.S., Double Major in Physics and Mathematics, Minor in Philosophy

  Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD

  Aug. 2022 – May 2026

  • GPA: 3.83/4.0
  • Honors: Departmental Honors in Physics; General Honors; Dean’s List for the 2022–23, 2023–24 and 2024–25 academic years and Fall 2025
  • Core courses: Astrophysical Dynamics, Radiative Astrophysics, Interstellar Medium and Astrophysical Fluid Dynamics, Astrophysical Plasmas, Physical Cosmology, Stellar Structure and Evolution, Introduction to Galaxies and Active Galactic Nuclei, Advanced Physics Laboratory

Research experience

• 2026 – present

  Investigating the dynamics of ultra-diffuse galaxy pairs

  Steward Observatory, University of Arizona

  Research Assistant · Supervisor: Dennis Zaritsky

  Aug. 2026 – Present

  • Analyzed spectra of six ultra-diffuse galaxy (UDG) candidates from the SMUDGes catalog, observed with the Binospec Integral Field Unit on the 6.5 m MMT.
  • Developed a pipeline to obtain the redshifts of UDGs from emission and absorption lines, incorporating sky-residual masking, continuum subtraction and Gaussian profile fitting.
  • Constructed narrow-band maps and optimized spectral extraction apertures to reduce uncertainties in the measured redshifts.
• 2026

  Measuring intrinsic velocity dispersions in Milky Way satellites

  Yale University

  Summer Research Assistant · Supervisor: Marla Geha

  Jun. 2026 – Aug. 2026

  • Investigated methods for measuring intrinsic velocity dispersions and estimating reliable upper limits in Milky Way satellite galaxies with small samples of stellar radial velocities.
  • Reanalyzed Keck/DEIMOS stellar radial velocities, examining how flat and log-uniform priors affected the inferred dispersions and upper limits.
  • Generated mock samples of 10–1,000 stars with velocity uncertainties ranging from 0.2 to 2 times the true intrinsic velocity dispersion. Compared the bias and reliability of maximum likelihood, restricted maximum likelihood (REML) and Bayesian methods, with particular attention to small samples.
  • Used Bayesian model comparison and mock-data tests to determine when intrinsic velocity dispersions could be resolved and to evaluate the reliability of upper limits for unresolved systems.
• 2025 – 2026

  Investigating the small-scale Routly-Spitzer effect

  Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)

  Supervisors: Andrew Fox and Sapna Mishra

  Feb. 2025 – Aug. 2026

  • Probed the small-scale variation of the neutral and ionized Milky Way halo gas by analyzing the spectra of six blue horizontal-branch (BHB) stars located in two Milky Way halo regions separated by 20 degrees in Galactic longitude, with 11 quasars as a control sample.
  • Used VPFIT to perform Voigt profile fitting to Ca II 3934, 3969 Å and Na I 5891, 5897 Å absorption in VLT/UVES high-resolution spectra of the 6 BHB stars and 11 quasars, deriving component velocities and column densities for analysis.
  • Compared the results with the literature, such as the 1952 paper that proposed the Routly-Spitzer effect and the later papers that confirmed the global Routly-Spitzer effect.
  • Investigated correlations between the Na I/Ca II column-density ratio and the column densities of individual ions, probed the column-density variations as a function of angular separation between sight lines, and proposed possible physical reasons for the observed Routly-Spitzer effect.
• 2024 – 2025

  Probing the ionizing photon budget in cosmic reionization

  Johns Hopkins University

  Supervisor: Colin Norman

  Sep. 2024 – Feb. 2025

  • Investigated the cosmic ionizing photon budget crisis in cosmic reionization proposed in 2024, focusing on whether the faint galaxies newly observed by JWST may overproduce LyC photons, potentially driving reionization earlier than allowed by the CMB and Lyα constraints.
  • Synthesized the recent literature on faint galaxies, Lyα-emitting galaxies and LyC leakers, and analyzed key physical parameters, including the escape fraction, the ionizing photon production efficiency and the clumping factor.
  • Discussed possible resolutions to the photon overproduction problem.
• 2024

  Refining gamma-ray periodicity in active galactic nuclei with extended Fermi-LAT data

  The University of Hong Kong (HKU)

  Supervisor: Partha Sarathi Pal

  Jun. 2024 – Aug. 2024

  • Reanalyzed gamma-ray light curves of five active galactic nuclei (AGN) using 17 years of Fermi-LAT data, extending the 2020 periodicity studies based on nine-year datasets.
  • Used Python to construct a periodicity search pipeline incorporating six detection methods, including Lomb-Scargle-based approaches, REDFIT, PDM and MCMC sinusoidal fitting.
  • Refined the periodicity measurements of the five AGN with this pipeline and evaluated their statistical significance.
  • Compared results from the extended dataset with earlier published results, finding consistent periods for three high-significance sources and confirming the periodic behavior of two lower-significance candidates.
• 2022 – 2024

  Computational gravitational-wave waveform modeling

  Johns Hopkins University

  Supervisor: Thomas Edwards

  Oct. 2022 – May 2024

  • Contributed to computational research in gravitational-wave waveform modeling by comparing newly generated waveforms with existing waveform libraries.
  • Used Python to perform waveform matching, contributing to the Ripple Python package.

Skills