1. Can you describe your role in the SDSS collaboration and what you enjoy most about it?
I’m the Co-chair of the BHM Reverberation Mapping Working Group and I lead and participate in a wide range of science analyses involving reverberation mapping and quasar physics. I particularly enjoy working with large amounts of data and with my collaborators in the BHM-RM WG.
2. Can you tell us about your educational background and how you got interested in the field of astronomy/astrophysics?
I got my B.S. in physics and astronomy from the University of Illinois in 2007, and then a M.S. and Ph.D in Astronomy from the Ohio State University. I wasn’t sure I was going to do astronomy until my sophomore year of college, but I took a couple of astro classes at UIUC and loved them and just decided that’s what I wanted to do! After my Ph.D I did two postdocs — one at Penn State and one at the University of Arizona.
3. What projects are you currently working on and what are you most excited about?
Reverberation mapping of the BHM-RM quasars! I’m most excited to see what these quasars have been doing and if there’s any interesting/odd behavior going on like we saw in the SDSS-RM group.
4. Can you describe how you balance work and personal life, and what advice would you give to someone just starting in the field?
Throughout my career I have set pretty solid boundaries on my work life and made time for my friends and family. If I work long hours and don’t decompress, my productivity actually DECREASES overall than when I’m working shorter hours and taking care of myself, so I have learned to stop when I’m not being productive and take some self-care time, and when I am good about this, my overall productivity is much higher than when I ignore that self-care time. Now that I have kids, they enforce these boundaries for me and they do not LET me work after hours, so I generally leave my work at work and I don’t do work in the evenings or on weekends, because that is family time. This does mean that I pretty much constantly feel like I should be doing more (this seems to be how academia goes), but I’ve decided that I know how I work best and what I need, and I will do this as works best for me.
5. Can you share with us a unique hobby or interest that you have outside of work?
I have two small kids so I don’t really have time for hobbies — ha! Shuttling my kids around to swim practice and baseball is my current hobby. I do like hiking when I get a chance.