What do you do here at Wright Lab? I work with Professor Laura Newburgh on the Simons Observatory, a new Cosmic Microwave Background experiment consisting of four telescopes that is currently being built in the Atacama Desert in Chile. I specifically work on the pointing mechanism for the telescopes–I am integrating the control and data acquisition software into our experiment’s larger software structure, creating the software needed to schedule and run data-taking scans, and working on pointing model simulations to better understand what our telescopes are looking at when we take data.
What is the most unique and/or exciting experience you’ve had here at Wright Lab? In September 2020, the first of our telescopes was completed at a factory in Germany, and I got to control the telescope platform during the verification process! (Because of COVID, this was done from my living room very early in the morning.)
What is something that people might not know about you that you’d like to share with the community? A lot of people probably already know that I love to bake, but don’t know that I only started learning to bake in the past 5 years (after being inspired by the Great British Bake-Off). I am most proud of learning to make macarons–it took me a whole year to figure out how to make them properly!
Where do you like to work remotely? I usually work at my desk, which is in a corner of my apartment with a small window.
