Profile

I live and work in Cambridge, MA, USA. I enjoy escaping the city for the mountains on the weekends, where I hike, rock and ice climb, and find other ways to explore the great outdoors. I love dogs, though I don’t currently own one, and I am looking forward to adopting one in the near future. When I’m not in the woods or the lab, I also like to read, listen to podcasts (favorites: Hardcore History and The Infinite Monkey Cage), watch TV (current shows: Silicon Valley and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel), read (currently reading: Alexander Hamilton Paperback by Ron Chernow), and craft, especially cross stitching.

I study radiation damage in materials. Specifically, I use a particle accelerator to create energetic ions which can be used to imitate the damage created by the neutrons that damage materials in fission and fusion reactors. After damaging materials, I study their properties and compare them to irradiated materials.  By understanding how radiation damages material, we can design better reactors, and enable the development of fusion as a clean source of energy.

It’s hard to describe a typical day in my lab! There are lots of “typical days”. A lot of days are spent running experiments on one of two particle accelerators where I do most of my research.

DANTE, an accelerator located in a basement Vault where I can safely run experiments that make large amounts of radiation.

CLASS, a particle accelerator where I can run higher energy experiments with many different ion beams.

Days that I run experiments are very important, but can be long and not very exciting. Occasionally, though, these days are really exciting because I learn something new about radiation!

I also spend a lot of time building and designing radiation targets for these accelerators.