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Current Work
At the University of Oklahoma School of Meteorology, I am currently taking classes and working toward a Masters in Meteorology under the advisement of Dr. Dave Parsons.
As a Graduate Research Assistant under Dr. Parsons and Dr. Howie Bluestein,
I am investigating warm-season nocturnal convection over the United States' Great Plains as part of the PECAN Project (Plains Elevated Convection At Night),
the goal of which is to better understand why current models have so much trouble forecasting it and to improve them.
Curently, I am learning to use CM1 to simulate nocturnal convection in an environment similar to the U.S. Great Plains in summer.
As I gain more understanding and develop new results, I will continue to post updates here.
Previous Work
Senior Honors
In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors,
I spent much of my senior year of college at Washington University in St. Louis working with Dr. V. Slava Solomatov,
using the numerical model Citcom to study the bizaar fluid mechanical phenomenon of localized convection.
The theoretical existence of localized convection was first reported by Solomatov (2012)
and the possible implications were enormous in planetary science.
I synthesized the pure fluid mechanical theory with empirical results from laboratory studies and even some observations to investigate whether localized convection may play a role in the evolution of certain topgraphic features on the surface of Venus that have eluded satisfactory explanation for decades.
You may peruse my inexpertly-written thesis here, and I hope to continue to post updates on this topic as I learn more about it.
REU 2012
For ten weeks during the summer of 2012, I participated in an REU (Research Experience for Undergrads) program, funded by the National Science Foundation, at the University of Connecticut.
I worked with PhD student Kathryn Gosselin under the advisement of Dr. Michael Renfro in the Mechanical Engineering Department on ignition studies of premixed hydrocarbon and vitiated gas mixtures at atmospheric and lower pressures.
The goal was to better understand the nature of ignitions at atmospheric and lower pressures and how mixing ratio of the fuel affected these results.
Ultimately, this research could enhance the safety and optimize the fuel costs of aircraft designed to fly at higher speeds and altitudes than current commercial planes.
I developed a program in MATLAB to extract the laminar flame speed from high speed video of the combustion events.
Although the paper of which this will eventually be part is yet unpublished, you can see the final presentation I made for the REU here.
Additionally, here is the portion of the Procedure that I wrote up for my part of the project which will hopefully appear, likely in an edited form, in the final, published paper.
For some reason, the figures are missing (I will look for those), but most of the figures I reference are in the presentation, and the writeup may at least help the presentation make more sense (without me there to actually present it).
Carbon Nanotubes
As part of the highest credit hour course I took in undergraduate, I conducted independent study on carbon nanotubes, and came up with this literature review (what then passed for a "research paper").
I still think it is one of the most fascinating topics I have ever studied, and will be sure to post updates in the unlikely event I ever have time to learn more about it.
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