During the summer of 2024, I participated in Penn State’s Physics REU, mentored by Dr. Sarah Shandera. I developed a simulation of a quantum circuit to study the domain of positivity for individual qubit maps and analyzed various thermodynamic and information-theoretic properties.
During Summer 2023, I participated in LSU’s REU program, mentored by Dr. Gabriela González, working on LIGO data analysis and noise characterization.
During my junior year at Carthage College, Dr. Joseph Anderson and I developed a new method for the pair correlation function for circular objects. I then used this to compute correlations functions of circular density fluctuations in the CMB for my physics thesis.
I have included some of my undergraduate research projects and their deliverables here.
Short description of PROJECT item number 1
Published in Classical and Quantum Gravity, 2025
We present a method to identify and categorize gravitational wave candidate triggers identified by matched filtering gravitational wave searches (pipelines) caused by transient noise (glitches) in gravitational wave detectors using support vector machine (SVM) classifiers. Our approach involves training SVM models on pipeline triggers which occur outside periods of excess noise to distinguish between triggers caused by random noise and those induced by glitches. This method is applied independently to the triggers produced by the GstLAL search pipeline on data from the laser interferometer gravitational-wave observatory Hanford and Livingston observatories during the second half of the O3 observing run. The trained SVM models assign scores to ambiguous triggers, quantifying their similarity to triggers caused by random fluctuations, with triggers with scores above a defined threshold being classified as glitch-induced. Analysis of these triggers reveals the distinct impact of different glitch classes on the search pipeline, including their distribution in relevant parameter spaces. We use metrics such as the Bhattacharyya coefficient and an over-representation ratio to quantify the consistency and prevalence of glitch impacts over time and across parameter spaces. Our findings indicate that some glitch types consistently produce triggers in specific regions of the parameter space, while others generate triggers that are more widely distributed. We observe that Scattered Light glitches appear differently in the search pipeline before and after a commissioning change, demonstrating how such detector changes appear in the pipeline’s response to certain glitch classes. This method provides a framework for understanding and mitigating the influence of non-Gaussian transients on gravitational wave search pipelines, with implications for improving detection sensitivity and better understanding noise populations.
Brainard Writing Center, Carthage College, 2022
Instructor, National Youth Science Camp, 2025
Undergraduate course, University of Florida, Department of Physics, 2025
Lab instructor for PHY 2053, a first semester of algebra or calculus-based physics, depending on the section.