Welcome!

I am a planetary scientist and postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego working with Prof. Samantha Trumbo. I use ultraviolet through mid-infrared spectroscopy to investigate how the surfaces of icy satellites record their formation conditions, radiation history, thermochemical evolution, and interior composition. These surfaces preserve complex mixtures of primordial building blocks, endogenic products, and exogenic alteration signatures. By combining observations from HST, JWST, and ground-based facilities, I develop multi-wavelength compositional constraints that disentangle these contributions and aim to link observable surface materials to the deeper evolutionary histories of icy worlds.

During my Ph.D. at Caltech, I led studies spanning the Jovian, Uranian, and Neptunian systems. I produced the first near-global UV–visible spectral maps of Callisto, revealing evidence for excavation of sub-surface non-ice material, and mapped Europa’s 2.07 μm feature to show its distribution is controlled by radiation rather than geology. I also used the stratigraphy of Pwyll and Manannán craters on Europa to show that its sulfur cycle operates on million-year timescales—substantially longer than laboratory predictions. More recently, I have expanded this work into the mid-infrared as PI of a JWST/MIRI program detecting silicate minerals on Callisto. I also co-lead JWST/NIRSpec observations of the ice giant ring-moons, where I identified aqueously altered phyllosilicates on Neptune’s inner satellites, indicating they reaccreted from the fragments of differentiated parent bodies.

As a postdoctoral researcher at UC San Diego, my research integrates UV through mid-infrared spectroscopy to trace the origin of non-ice materials across icy satellites and dwarf planets. By establishing mid-infrared mineralogical diagnostics alongside shorter-wavelength datasets, I aim to build a comparative framework connecting primordial building blocks, surface processing, and ocean–surface exchange throughout the outer solar system.

Explore my research to learn more about my work, or view my publications and CV.