Education

Amherst College, Amherst MA | Expected graduation May 2021

• Physics and Astronomy double major
• Honors thesis, Astronomy
• GPA: 3.72/4.00

Experience

Follette Lab, Amherst College | Amherst, MA | 2018 – present

Research Assistant- Dr. Kate Follette

• Conducting angular and spectral differential imaging to search transitional disks for forming exoplanets
• Calibrating the absolute astrometric solution for the Magellan Adaptive Optics system
• Transition Disk Database Project Lead: coordinated and managed junior researchers in aggregating data and developing a platform for a centralized, public record of the properties of over 200 transition disks
• Contributed to GAPlanetS project code (Follette et al. in prep.)
• Reduced optical data from the Magellan Adaptive Optics instrument

SIOS Lab, Cornell University | Ithaca, NY | June 2020 – August 2020

Research Assistant- Dr. Dmitry Savransky

• Performed space telescope mission yield simulations for Miniaturized Distributed Occulture/Telescope (mDOT) mission
• Contributed to EXOSIMS project code (Savransky et al. 2017)

Physics and Astronomy Department, Amherst College | Amherst, MA | 2019 – present

Teaching Assistant, Grading Assistant, Amherst College Observatory (ACO) operation

• TA for ASTR112 (2019F), ASTR337 (2020F), ASTR341 (2021S)
• Experience conducting data collection/reduction, telescope setup/operation, grading/rubric construction, and assisting students with coding challenges

Additional Experience/Volunteer Work/etc

Science communication - Astronomy Editor, Amherst STEM Network | October 2019 – present

Science communication - Writer, personal blog | June 2018 – present

Volunteer - Great Falls Books Through Bars | Nov. 2019 – March 2020

Performer - Mr. Gads House of Improv | Sept. 2017 – present

Director/Producer - “LOL: A Modern Computer Farce” at the Shoebox Theater | June 2016

Presentations

“Exploring the Transition Disk Population with a public facing database” AAS 235th meeting, Jan 7th

Publications

Follette, … Balmer et al. (in prep.)

Balmer et al. (in prep.)

Awards

Charles Hamilton Houston Program (2020)

Gregory S. Call Award (2019)

Sarles Fellow, Sarles Science Research Fund (2018)

Interests

Academic interests include planetary formation, circumstellar disk evolution, and direct imaging techniques. Self published two text-adventure games: You are petting a cat, and Fly Trap

Data Science Skills

• Python: data visualization, preprocessing, analysis. Written multiple Optical/IR data reduction pipelines (Magellan/Clio2, WIYN0.9m/HDI, ACO).
• Git: version control and collaboration
• LaTeX: academic document preparation, formatting, design