About

I am a sixth-year graduate student in astronomy at Harvard University.

I am primarily interested in the formation and evolution of the Milky Way. I use idealized simulations to study specific questions about the Milky Way. I have shown with a simulation of a Milky Way-like barred galaxy that the braking interaction between the bar and the dark matter halo could be arrested by the Milky Way’s gas phase, explaining how it is both old and fast.

I have recently been interested in the formation of the “abundance bimodality” - the separation between stars with high amounts of alpha-elements (e.g., magnesium) and low amounts. By running numerical experiments with these idealized simulations, I have argued that such a bimodality is the natural consequence of a brief quiescent period in the Milky Way’s history. This could be induced by the merger between the Milky Way and Gaia-Sausage-Enceladus about eight billion years ago.