Research Interests

Research Motivated by Human Wellbeing

While it's hard to narrow down my interests at this point in my career, I think the best broad definition would be that I'm interested in data-driven research focused on addressing issues that directly impact people. In my current role, I am extremely enthusiastic because I know the models we produce could evnetually help better correlate serious health outcomes with pollutant concentrations. WHile I really enjoyed my Astrophysics research and found it fascinating, I've found this transition to be fulfilling in a way which I hope to continue in graduate school.

At the moment, I've mostly considered further directions in which I could take the connection of air pollution and public health. The possibilities are various, from exploring the statistical side of uncertaintiy minimization and constraining more thoroughly, to tying pollutant exposure models to health records, and looking at how evenly (or unevnly) the burden of air pollution is spread among different communities. That being said, I'd be open to most any data-oriented project under the broad scope of improving wellbeing.

Public Health, Environmental Justice, and the Urban Environment

Environmental Health, and in particular exposure assesment, is one path about which I am greatly interested. In particular, I would like to investigate how the urban environment in which people exist can affect their health. This could involve assesing which communities face the most risk from say, power plant emissions, or heat. Or attempting to quantify a link between lung disease and a particular pollutant.

There are almost endless project ideas in this realm, and an additional layer of excitement comes from figuring out how to conduct such research in the first place. As of yet, I'm only just starting to get into-the-weeds on the statistical side of all of this, and it's something I absolutely want to keep progressing moving forward.

Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis

On a personal level, I just deeply enjoy when my work has a spatial component to it. I find that it provides some intuitiveness to data that is sometimes hard to find. And all the research I've done so far has incorporated some sort of map (just some were in space).

More seriously, spatial analysis is baked into a lot of the research I would want to pursue--environmental justice work, for example, can be centered around specific physical communities and the conditions they face relative to other, physically separate communities. That's just one of many such cases. And remote sensing data is a critical tool for achieiving these objectives. I've worked with satellite data in my current role and quite thoroughly in undergraduate coursework, and I've always enjoyed it. It's an exciting time to be working with it as well, with new data always on the horizon. All that to say, I'd really be excited to incorporate a spatial component to whatever specific project I end up pursuing.