1. Can you describe your role in the SDSS collaboration and what you enjoy most about it?
I’m one of the working group leads of the Milky Way Mapper TESS Red Giant Branch Seismology working group, and I collaborate with folks on various other science topics related to stars. I like that SDSS provides a supportive community to work together on different topics, including making it easy to create new projects, get involved with other people’s projects, and get help with my own ideas.
2. Can you tell us about your educational background and how you got interested in the field of astronomy/astrophysics?
I did my undergrad at Caltech, my graduate work at Ohio State, and was a Hubble Fellow in Hawaii before joining the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor. I read a lot of books as a child, starting with fantasy and then branching into sci-fi. Then in middle school, I started watching Star Trek and Stargate. I took one engineering class and decided that it wasn’t for me, but then I did a summer program on Astronomy at the Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute (PARI) when I was fifteen, and from then on I knew I wanted to be an astronomer.
3. What projects are you currently working on and what are you most excited about?
I work on lots of projects at any one time, but most of my work revolves around how well we can characterize stars (using their photometric brightness, spectroscopic information, variability and pulsations, and so forth) and how well those observations match the predictions of our computer models of stars and how they evolve over time. Right now, I’m thinking a lot about how we get the ages of stars, and how well different methods’ estimates of ages agree with each other, in hopes that we can eventually use those ages to map out how our galaxy evolved over time.
4. Can you describe how you balance work and personal life, and what advice would you give to someone just starting in the field?
It’s easy for me to get wrapped up in work and tempted to do just one more thing once I start working, so I try to make sure I have regularly scheduled fun things where I’m accountable to someone else to get me out of my office (joining sports teams, dungeons and dragons games, scheduled outings with friends, etc). I also try to do most of my working at the office during the week and avoid taking work home on evenings and weekends as much as possible.
5. Can you share with us a unique hobby or interest that you have outside of work?
I like making stuff- baking, sewing, I’m learning to crochet this year, that sort of thing.