
I am currently a Project Assistant Professor (NAOJ Fellow) at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, working for NAOJ Chile and based at the Joint ALMA Observatory in Santiago, Chile.
Prior to moving to Chile (with a two-month stopover at NAOJ HQ in Tokyo), I worked for three years as a Jansky Fellow of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
From 2008 until 2014 I was a graduate student
in the Astronomy Department
at the University of California, Berkeley.
While living in the beautiful Bay Area I enjoyed
motorcycling and skiing, bluegrass and jazz, Kung Fu and kickboxing, and especially Indian food.
My co-blogger Yogi and I succeeded in an epic, two-year quest to
review all 30+ Indian restaurants in Berkeley on our blog,
Masala Chaat—a quest that we continued back on the East Coast from 2014–2017, during which time we dined at all of the Indian restaurants in both Cambridge and Somerville, Mass.
And now going back to the beginning: I grew up in Penn Yan (short for “Pennsylvania Yankees”),
a small town in the Finger Lakes
region of Western New York, known for its eleven picturesque lakes, rolling hills,
and exquisite white wines (try the Riesling!).
In 1998, I left home to attend
Woodberry Forest, an
all-male boarding high school school in central Virginia. From there I went
on to the University of Virginia, where I majored in physics and minored in
Spanish. I also tutored athletes in Calculus; performed in musicals with
the First Year Players;
and sang a cappella with the New
Dominions, classical opuses with
the University Singers,
and jazz with the UVa
Jazz Ensemble and a number of smaller combos.
After college, I taught for two years, both at Woodberry Forest and at
the Yinhatil Nab'en (“Seeds of Knowledge”)
school in the rural Mayan town of San Mateo Ixtatán, Huehuetenango,
Guatemala (here is the blog
I kept), after which, in 2008,
I moved out west and began my astronomical studies at UC Berkeley.