Research
I study binary black holes using gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime that encode the masses, spins, and orientations of merging compact objects. My goal is to understand the astrophysical origins of the black holes observed by LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA and link our observations to theories of stellar evolution. The size and complexity of our dataset also requires state-of-the-art statistical methods to glean insight. I aim to develop efficient, flexible data-analysis tools and stress-test our model assumptions.
Formation Channels
There are two main classes of models for how binary black holes form. In isolated evolution, two stars are born together and co-evolve over their lifetimes, often exchanging mass through interactions like common envelope evolution. In dynamical formation, encounters in dense stellar clusters promote binary formation and mergers; if a merger remnant is retained in the cluster, it can merge again—producing so-called hierarchical mergers. These two channels have distinct, overlapping predictions for black hole masses, spins, and redshift distributions.
Projects
Hierarchical mergers in GWTC-4
We find evidence for a hierarchical merger subpopulation in the GWTC-4 catalog.
Population III stars with next-generation detectors
We forecast the ability of future observatories like Einstein Telescope and Cosmic Explorer to constrain the demographics of Population III (metal-free) stellar populations.
Noise uncertainty in parameter estimation
We investigated a method to concurrently estimate noise and compact-binary signal parameters in gravitational-wave data, reducing bias from mismodeled noise.
See my CV for a full list of publications and talks.