Research

Fast radio bursts are short (~ms), bursts of radio emission originating from extragalactic origins. Think of all of the energy the sun produces over the course of three days. Fast radio bursts emit the same amount of energy in ~a ms! Wild! However, despite being discovered in 2007, the origins of fast radio bursts (FRBs) still remain unknown. I am interested in studying multiple properties of these intriguing objects, both to figure out their origins and also to use them as probes of our universe. I a member of the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment (CHIME) Fast Radio Burst Collaboration. Within CHIME/FRB, I am primarily interested in two different research projects: searching for high-energy counterparts to FRBs and using the morphology (time and frequency structure) of FRBs to understand the differences between repeating and non-repeating fast radio bursts.

Image credit: CHIME

Additionally, I am a member of the CHIME/FRB Outriggers, three CHIME-like instruments that will serve as a very long baseline interferometry network through North America in order to localize FRBs to less than 50 mas. This will allow for not only the host localization of 100s of FRBs, but also information on where within these galaxies they live. I am a key contributor to the calibration of the CHIME/FRB Outriggers as I am using the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) to obtain ~mas level positions for ~100 pulsars that will serve as the Outrigger's calibrators.

Science Communication

I spend a lot of time communicating science to different audiences. I am a writer for AstroBites, a graduate-student led community which writes accessible astronomy bites. Checkout all my pieces written on Astrobites. I have also served as one of four outreach coordinators for the physics department at McGill for the last four years. Something I am particularly proud of is an outreach program that I co-founded in 2021 called 'Science in Space: How to Telescope.' This program is a collaboration between McGill University and Dell Technologies in which middle school girls build telescopes in Minecraft over the course of 10 weeks.