Biography
I am a fifth-year PhD candidate and NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Department of Geology at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), working with Dr. Trish Gregg to understand how stresses within a volcanic system influence magma propagation and eruption location. My 3-minute Research Live! talk (for which I won the Graduate College's 2017 People's Choice Award) provides a good overview. I am also working on a project funded by the NSF Graduate Research Internship Program (GRIP) at the U.S. Geological Survey's Cascades Volcano Observatory in collaboration with Dr. Wendy Stovall, Dr. David Damby (California Volcano Observatory) and Dr. Sarah McBride (USGS Mendenhall Fellow). For my GRIP, I am evaluating how well posts and comments by the USGS Volcanoes social media group informed Hawaii's residents during the 2018 lower East Rift Zone eruption and summit collapse of Kīlauea Volcano. I even wrote a fun blog post on what got me interested in this topic!
Please visit my personal webpage for more information about me and my work!
Research Interests
Geodynamic models of volcano evolution
Magma-tectonic interactions within large basaltic volcanoes (with a focus on Hawai‘i)
Science and Hazard Communication
Education
- University of Canterbury
- Pomona College
