About
I am an incoming Miller Fellow in astrophysics at the Miller Institute for Basic Science @ Berkeley, beginning Fall 2026, and currently a Black Hole Explorer Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University's Black Hole Initiative. I completed my PhD as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow at Las Cumbres Observatory, based at UC Santa Barbara, under Prof. D. Andrew Howell, and hold a B.S. in Physics from the University of Massachusetts Boston (2021).
I study compact objects: the neutron stars and black holes left behind when massive stars die, where matter is compressed beyond anything that can be reproduced in a laboratory and spacetime is curved strongly enough to trap light in orbit. My work centers on measuring their spin, which fixes the geometry of the surrounding spacetime, supplies the energy that drives the most powerful jets in the universe, and preserves a record of how each object was assembled. Spin has historically been difficult to constrain without appealing to uncertain models of the surrounding matter, and most existing measurements remain correspondingly indirect.
My primary interest is in direct measurements of compact object spin along two complementary lines. For supermassive black holes, I work with the photon ring, a lensed image feature predicted by general relativity whose shape is determined by the spacetime rather than by the accreting plasma; towards this, I contributed to the Event Horizon Telescope's first images of M87 and Sgr A, and I now lead spin-inference development for the Black Hole Explorer mission. In neutron stars, I hunt the "chirping" modulation imprinted on supernova light curves as a newborn magnetar's fallback disk is dragged by the rotating spacetime around it, leading both the search for new examples in time-domain surveys and the theoretical work required to interpret them.
Research interests
Compact objects
Very-long-baseline interferometry
Education and experience
Awards (selected, see CV for full list)
Mananya Tantiwiwat Award
2025
University of California, Santa Barbara
Broida-Hirschfelder Fellowship
2025
University of California, Santa Barbara
1st Place Award, Grad Slam (Physics and Chemistry Round)
2025
University of California, Santa Barbara
Event Horizon Telescope Early Career Award
2022
Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration
Summary of first author papers
Outside of work
Public speaking (under construction)
A Mission to Solve the Greatest Mystery
UC Santa Barbara Grad Slam
Aprli 2025
Finalist talk for the UCSB Grad Slam on the BHEX mission goals
General relativity beats the heart of a dying star
Santa Barbara Museum of Natural History Invited Lecture
March 2026
Public Lecture by Joseph Farah on the magnetar discovery, published in Nature



