About Me

I am a computational astrophysicist who thinks about the faintest galaxies in the universe, and seeks to unravel what they have to say about dark matter.

Long before that, I was born in Suwon, South Korea, from which I moved at the ripe age of 11 months to Phoenix, AZ. I lived there until I left for college, which left me with a lasting love for cacti, mountains, low humidity, and endless days of sun. I semi-regularly catch myself dreaming of the dry heat of Arizona summers, especially of stepping out of air-conditioned oases to be enveloped by what feels like a (very) warm hug. I moved to Pasadena, CA to get my undergraduate degree in physics at Caltech. There, I fell in love with exoplanets, and did four projects on them across my summers there, which I continued during the academic year. I was convinced I was going to get my PhD in it.

But somewhere along the way, I’d fallen more deeply in love with computational astrophysics. When I decided to go to The Ohio State University in Columbus, OH for my PhD—attracted by its phenomenal Astro Coffee discussions and the department’s highly interactive culture—the only person offering projects involving significant high-performance computing was Annika Peter, who worked on dark matter. I thus changed fields, and haven’t looked back since.

The pursuit of the identity of dark matter has since led me to Guildford, UK, where I did a postdoc with Justin Read at the University of Surrey, and then back to Pasadena, CA as a Carnegie Theory Fellow at the Carnegie Observatories. I’ve dabbled in various topics concerning dark matter, from constraining self-interacting dark matter via merging galaxy clusters, to testing the classic cold dark matter paradigm via the number and kinematics of the Milky Way’s dwarf satellite galaxies. But these days, I spend much of my time thinking about how galaxies form and evolve, because it turns out you first have to understand that before you can really say much about what galaxies have to teach us about dark matter. You can read more about what I do on my research page.

Outside astronomy, you’ll most often find me digging holes in the ground to plant out the latest seasonal veggies and flowers, or curling up with my two kitties, Archie (after Archimedes), and Ada (after Lovelace). Depending on the season, you’ll may also find me skiing or backpacking (especially very long trails).