Stellar Mergers and Common-Envelope Evolution

I am currently most focused on understanding transients from common-envelope evolution. Luminous Red Novae (LRNe) are transients associated with the final stages of common-envelope evolution in stellar binaries - a stellar merger or common-envelope ejection. LRNe have low intrinsic luminosities, making them observationally rare. I study these transients using ZTF, WINTER, NEOWISE, and JWST.

Electromagnetic followup of gravitational waves

I work with ZTF and WINTER teams to follow-up gravitational wave alerts detected by the LIGO collaboration to search for their electromagnetic counterparts - the elusive kilonovae.

Dusty Variable stars

Using PGIR and more recently SPHEREx, I search for dusty variable stars in the Milky Way. This includes dusty AGB stars, R Coronae Borealis stars, symbiotic binaries, carbon stars, and young stellar objects.

Unusual low luminosity explosions

I am interested in odd-ball, subluminous explosions, such as low luminosity Type Iax supernovae and Intermediate luminosity red transients. I use ZTF, WINTER and JWST to study these explosions.

Data processing pipelines for time-domain surveys

I co-created mirar (Modular Image Reduction and Analysis Resource) - an open-source python package for processing and analyzing images from time-domain surveys. The modular and flexible design of mirar allows for reducing images and detecting transients by performing image subtraction on images from any optical/infrared telescope. Originally built to process WINTER data, mirar is now being used to process data from four other telescopes.