I am working in Dr. Lucy Fortson's group, studying both Blazars— active galactic nuclei (AGN) whose relativistic jets are along the line of sight of the observer— and radio-loud AGN with mis-aligned jets to our line-of-sight to investigate their properties as gamma-ray emitters compared to the more prevalent blazars. The gamma rays emitted from radio galaxy jets are a probe of the physics of the jet. Specifically, I am analyzing VERITAS observatory data of 3C 120 to investigate the idea that anomalously bright X-rays detected in the Chandra observatory could have a counterpart in TeV gamma rays. I am also working on implementing Boosted Decision Trees to boost sensitivity to weak AGN sources, since many radio galaxies are likely to be weak gamma-ray emitters, and on training a machine learning algorithm to identify gamma ray-initiated events from the cosmic-ray background events.
Biography
Outside of academics, I practice Bharatanatyam, an Indian classical dance, and enjoy photography and travel. I am passionate about promoting women in science and hope to contribute to making astrophysics welcoming to all.
Education
I pursued B.S. Physics and B.S. Astronomy at the University of Texas of Austin.