Hail Adventurer!
I am a planetary scientist and a Visiting Scholar at Cornell University in the COMPASSE Research group. I hold a PhD in Planetary Science from MIT with a dissertation on the computational modeling of planetary surface processes. I also hold a B.S. with honors in Geophysics with a specialization in Space Physics from UCLA.
A central theme of my research is understanding how a planet’s landscape records its history. During my PhD, I focused on Saturn’s moon Titan, which is the only other known world with an active hydrologic cycle. Like Earth, Titan has rivers and lakes that have extensively shaped its surface. However, unlike Earth, Titan’s hydrology is composed primarily of a mixture of liquid hydrocarbons that have mechanical properties that vary seasonally and regionally. Studying Titan’s surface provides not only a deeper insight into an unusual place in our solar system but also a natural laboratory for exploring the fundamental physics underpinning the coupling between a planet’s surface and atmosphere.
My work employs a mixture of remote-sensing, spacecraft observations, laboratory, and fieldwork to inform and develop numerical models. My goal is to utilize the wealth of data available on worlds like Earth, Mars, and Titan to deepen our understanding of processes in geomorphology, fluid dynamics, and sedimentology to decode the past of any world, within or beyond our solar system. This work also provides a planetary-scale perspective for our own understanding of the complex processes that have made Earth such an extraordinary place.
Earth
Titan
Mars
How does a planet’s surface record its past climate?
News
June 2026: Started as a Visiting Scholar in the COMPASSE group at Cornell
May 2026: Waves work featured in EOS What Winds Whip Up Otherworldly Waves?
May 21, 2026: New paper! “Modeling the Seasonality of Wind‐Driven Hydrocarbon Waves in Titan’s Polar Lakes”
May 13, 2026: PhD successfully defended!
April 30, 2026: Waves work featured by Astronomy Photo of the Day
April 2026: New paper! “Modeling Wind-Driven Waves on Other Planets: Applications to Mars, Titan, and Exoplanets”
March 2026: Invited talk at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution “Surfing the Alien Seas: The Dynamics of Waves in Titan’s Lakes”
June 2025: Thrilled to have been selected for the MathWorks Science Fellowship!
April 2025: In the news. Phys.org: Scientists probe the mystery of Titan’s missing deltas
March 2025: New paper! “Detectability of Coastal Landforms on Titan with the Cassini RADAR”
December 2024: Invited talk at American Geophysical Union (AGU) “Waves in Alien Seas”
March 2024: Oral presentation at Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) “Confirmation of a Callisto Subsurface Ocean using Bayesian Inference”
December 2023: Oral presentation at American Geophysical Union (AGU) “A Bayesian Approach to the Interior Sounding of Callisto”
September 2023: Invited talk at Brown University’s Planetary Lunch Bunch “Modelling Wave Action on the Shores of Titan’s Lakes”
August 2023: Write up in MIT Scope (“A Titan”)
December 2022: Oral presentation at American Geophysical Union (AGU) “Sediment Entrainment by Waves and Tides on Titan”
May 2022: Passed candidacy exam!
September 2020: Starting graduate school at MIT!
March 2020: Honored to have been awarded the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship!
February 2020: Honored to have been awarded the Dean of Science Fellowship at MIT!
January 2019: Write up in UCLA’s EPSS Fall newsletter about the InSight analogue experiment (“MinSight: A Multi-Million Dollar Mission to Mars (and the Classroom)“)
June 2018: Graduated Valedictorian from UCLA’s EPSS Department with a B.S. in Geophysics and a specialization in Space Physics!
June 2018: Honored to have been awarded the Eugene B. Waggoner Scholarship!
