Fun Facts

I am a music enthusiast! I love listening to and playing guitar and am always trying to develop new skills. Tied with my passion for music is my passion for space - I began college studying geology to learn more about planetary physics but switched to engineering and began designing, building, and launching rockets for my university's project teams. Nowadays I spend time researching spacecraft engineering for Oregon State University's Plasma, Energy, and Space Propulsion Laboratory.

About Me

I was a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Space Systems Engineering course at Oregon State University. I am a Ph.D. student researching the fourth state of matter - plasma. Plasmas make up 99% of our solar system and are being used to propel spacecraft to deep space and create clean energy inside fusion reactors. I hope to help design plasma-facing materials that can withstand temperatures 7 times hotter than the sun.

Experience

I was a Graduate Teaching Assistant for the Space Systems Engineering course at Oregon State University where I instructed a class of 50 students, created my online study content, and held weekly office hours for additional student assistance. I held a lead teaching assistant position during my undergraduate studies for a project-based course, where I managed other TAs and advised alongside the instructor while also directly connecting to the students.

Approach

For STEM subjects motivated by equations and problem-solving, I believe memorization is a poor way to approach a class effort. Students should be taking time to develop a fundamental understanding of their class content. By developing an understanding of how principles fundamentally function, those tools can be applied to problems outside of the classroom, which I find to be an exciting and rewarding process.