Curriculum Vitae

Date of Birth: October 25, 1978
Place of Birth: New York, NY
Citizenship: USA

Academic Experience

• Postdoctoral Scholar in Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, 2008-
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA), 2005-2008

Degrees

• Ph. D. in Theoretical Astrophysics, California Institute of Technology, June 2005
  Thesis: To the horizon and beyond: weak lensing of the CMB and binary inspirals into horizonless objects
  Advisor: Prof. Marc Kamionkowski
• A. B. in Physics summa cum laude, Princeton University, May 2000
  Thesis: Electron Diffusion with the CDMS Detector
  Advisor: Prof. Tom Shutt
• Certificate in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, May 2000
  Research Topic: Wavelet Analysis of the CMB
  Advisor: Prof. Ingrid Daubechies

Honors and Awards

• NASA Graduate Student Research Fellowship, California Institute of Technology, 2003-2005
• NSF Graduate Fellowship, California Institute of Technology, 2000-2003
• Kusaka Memorial Prize in Physics, Princeton University, 2000
• Phi Beta Kappa, Princeton University, 2000
• Sigma Xi Scientific Research Society, Princeton University, 2000

Professional Societies

• American Astronomical Society, 2001-
• Canadian Astronomical Society, 2005-

Professional Activities

• Referee for:
  • Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics (JCAP)
  • Physics Letters B
  • Foundations of Physics
  • International Journal of Modern Physics D
  • Canadian Time Allocation Committee, Gemini Observatory
• Reviewer for Cosmology section of Scitizen, an online science news source for the public, moderated by the science community
• Organizer of a Focus Group on Gravitational Waves and Numerical Relativity at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics (CITA) from August 28 to September 1, 2007

Students

• Margaret McLean was a National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada summer undergraduate research fellow at CITA under my supervision during the summer of 2007. She helped develop models of colliding spiral galaxies under the influence of dark-matter forces in addition to gravity. She entered graduate school in astronomy at Harvard in the fall 2008.
• Micah Solomon was an undergraduate at Caltech working under my supervision and that of my thesis advisor Marc Kamionkowski on the effect of higher post-Newtonian terms on the inspiral of test particles into supermassive black holes.

Talks and Presentations

• NYU Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York, NY, 8/20/08
• Canadian Astronomical Society Annual Meeting, CASCA 2008, Victoria, BC, 5/26/08
• Syracuse University, Physics Colloquium, Syracuse, NY, 4/1/08
• Syracuse University, Relativity Seminar, Syracuse, NY, 3/31/08
• Brown University, Providence, RI, 3/4/08
• Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, 1/15/08
• American Astronomical Society 211th Meeting, Austin, TX, 1/10/08
• Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC), Stanford, CA, 12/10/07
• Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics (KICP), University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, 10/12/07
• Center for Particle Astrophysics, Fermilab, Batavia, IL, 10/8/07
• G2000 Astronomy Seminar, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, 9/26/07
• Focus Group on Gravitational Waves and Numerical Relativity, CITA, Toronto, ON, 8/29/07
• Canadian Astronomical Society Annual Meeting, CASCA 2007, Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston, ON, 6/6/07
• Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) H₀ Workshop, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, 5/17/07
• G2000 Astronomy Seminar, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, 3/14/07
• Cosmology on the Great Lakes Meeting, Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, ON, 11/10/06
• NYU Center for Cosmology and Particle Physics, New York, NY, 10/6/06
• COSMO 06, International Workshop on Particle Physics and the Early Universe, Lake Tahoe, NV, 9/28/06
• 16th Kingston Theoretical Astrophysics Meeting, Queen's University, Kingston, ON, 7/20/06
• American Astronomical Society 208th Meeting, Calgary, AB, 6/7/06
• Canadian Astronomical Society Annual Meeting, CASCA 2006, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, 6/3/06
• CMB and Physics of the Early Universe International Conference, Ischia, Italy, 4/21/06
• CITA Seminar, Toronto, ON, 10/17/05

Popular Articles

• "Tidal Streams Probe Dark Matter Forces", Scitizen, 10/23/06
• "No Extra Gravity for Dark Matter", ScienceNOW, web magazine of the AAS, 10/8/06
• "Test will show if dark energy interacts with dark matter", New Scientist, 6/8/06