About Me

Academic Life

I grew up in the quintessentially rural town of Caledonia, Mississippi, where I attended elementary, middle, and high school up to my Junior year. At this point in my high school education I began attending the Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science, a public magnet school devoted to providing a first-rate science education for the most driven students in the state of Mississippi. While at MSMS, I had the opportunity to pursue AP chemistry, organic chemistry, and introductory physical chemistry all before the age of eighteen. To this day I see my education and experience at MSMS as one like no other; a Mississippi-shaded Salinger short story that put me down a path of curiosity and eagerness that I am still exploring today.

Following my time at MSMS I continued to pursue Chemistry at the University of Mississippi, where I also found a love for Mathematics. Naturally, these two passions combined, resulting me leaving the university with a BS in Chemistry with a concentration in physical chemistry as well as a BA in mathematics. My experiences at the University of Mississippi were not reserved to the classroom, as large swathes of time were also spent in the lab. My research experiences began my Freshman year where I worked to refurbish a defunct time of flight mass spectrometer as a member of the Hammer Lab. This project would later run into financial limitations, at which point I would devote my studies solely to the computational aspect of the project at hand and join the Fortenberry Group and dedicate my undergraduate thesis to computational astrochemistry. As a member of the Fortenberry group, I had the ability to merge my interests of mathematics and physical chemistry even closer and dip into topics previously foreign to me ranging from programming to the practical implementation of electronic structure theory.

In between my seemingly disparate research experiences at the University of Mississippi I also had the opportunity to participate in a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates at the University of Southern California, where I investigated the optical properties of nitrogen-vacancy centers in nanodiamonds under Dr. Susumu Takahashi. This work was extremely refreshing for me, and encouraged me to step back and reflect about what I was looking for in research on a personal level, both from an advising standpoint and a scientific one. Furthermore, I was honored to receive a Goldwater Scholarship for my work during the summer, which I consider a pivotal moment for me in applying to graduate school (for any undergrad researchers reading this, apply to Goldwater!).

Finally, we have arrived in the present in which I have recently graduated from the University of Mississippi as of spring 2021 and will be entering the California Institute of Technology as a first year PhD student in the fall of 2021. At the point of writing this I am currently undecided in the research group that I will be joining, but I intend to work in the field of instrument development for the analysis of fundamental phenomena.

Thank you for reading about my experiences in academia up until this point, and if you have any questions for me please feel free to reach out.