I received a Master’s degree in geography and environmental systems from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in 2021. Working in Prof. Dillon Mahmoudi‘s research group, I characterized and developed a typology of US metropolitan areas and their neighborhoods based on a GIS analysis of their built environment features. This spatial analysis was primarily performed in R using the sf package environment, with QGIS used for cartography.
My Master’s thesis based on this work, A Nation of Neighborhoods: A Quantitative Understanding of US Neighborhoods and Metropolitan Areas won the UMBC Grad Student Association Special Award for Outstanding Achievement. The slides for my thesis defense presentation are also available. I also published my method for quantifying walkable density as an article on City Observatory, “Mapping Walkable Density.”
Undergraduate and Graduate Work in Chemistry
In addition to my Master’s degree in human geography, I have a background in physical chemistry. I received a Bachelor’s of Science with honors in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in 2009. My undergraduate thesis, Producing Safe Spin-Polarized Metabolites for Magnetic Resonance Imaging.
In 2015, I completed my Master’s of Science in physical chemistry in Prof. Sylvia Ceyer‘s lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) with a thesis on Xenon Difluoride Etching and Molecular Oxygen Oxidation of Silicon by Reactive Scattering.
Teaching Experience
While a graduate student at MIT, I served as a graduate teaching assistant in general chemistry and thermodynamics and received the MIT Chemistry Department Outstanding Teaching Award for the 2012-2013 school year. I also earned the MIT Teaching and Learning Lab Graduate Student Teaching Certificate in 2014.
Leadership Experience
During my time at MIT, I served as an officer of the MIT Science Fiction Society for five years, including as president. In this role, I planned and implemented a major reorganization of our 60,000-volume science fiction and fantasy library to increase available shelf space and improve patron experience.
I also served for two years on the board of the MIT Association of Student Activities (ASA), the student government body responsible for overseeing MIT’s roughly 400 student groups. As ASA Treasurer, I was responsible for allocating $175,000 of funding to student-run events annually. I also participated in the reassignment of student group offices and oversaw updates to group constitutions to comply with MIT policy.