Welcome
I am a Professor of Astronomy at The Ohio State University. My research is focused on observational cosmology, including the development of new instrumentation and analysis methods. My teaching focuses on cosmology, data analysis, and mentoring students in research.
Current Research
My focus is on understanding the origin of cosmic acceleration, which is commonly ascribed to some mysterious dark energy. I work with data from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is in the midst of an eight-year survey of over 60 million extragalactic objects. I contributed extensively to the construction of the DESI instrument and presently work on measurements of cosmological parameters with our survey data. I am also involved in research and development for a future Stage 5 Spectroscopic Instrument (Spec-S5). Please see my Research Page for more details.
Mini Bio
I am originally from the great city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where I graduated from Central High School and Temple University (with a year studying abroad at the Universität Hamburg).
After college I attended graduate school at The Ohio State University and enjoyed postdoctoral fellowships as a Carnegie Fellow at the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington and as a Clay Fellow at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
Here is a very nice interview with me from 2021 when I was a William Bentinck-Smith Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studies at Harvard University.
Miscellaneous Links
Useful Astronomical Data with photometric zeropoints
Mask design software: MMS for MODS and OMS for OSMOS