Research Students

I’ve had the privilege to be research mentor to a number of outstanding undergrads and grad students over the years. My students include:

Tung Tran (formerly MIT undergraduate, now a PhD student at Stanford with Eva Silverstein). Tung was lead author on our paper (along with David Kaiser and Ben Lehmann) on a new observable for detecting PBH dark matter! https://journals.aps.org/prd/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevD.110.063533

Tung and I also worked on a project on neutrino decoupling and supermassive black hole seeds (see chapter 4 of https://inspirehep.net/literature/2721251). This work is part of an ongoing project at MIT lead by Alan Guth and the Density Perturbation Group, along with Jolyon Bloomfield and Josu Aurrekoetxea.

Sol Gutiérrez-Lara (just graduated from Harvard and headed to grad school!), is a talented cosmology student (and cellist!) who worked with me, Thomas Steingasser, and David Kaiser on critical Higgs inflation! Our paper will be out in just a few weeks! In the meantime, take a look at the work by Thomas, David, and Mark Hertzberg at Tufts, who laid all the critical (pun intended) foundation for this model. https://arxiv.org/pdf/2505.20386.

Kayla Bartell is a great young researcher currently at Perimeter. While at UCSC, Kayla began working with me on a review and analysis of sub-solar mass PBH detection and constraint. Our collaboration includes the brilliant Matt Caplan (ISU), and recently we were lucky enough to have Florian Kuhnel, PBH expert, join our paper, which has been invited for a 50th anniversary edition of Universe, guest-edited by Jeremy Mould. The issue is expected out this fall, keep an eye out! https://www.mdpi.com/journal/universe/special_issues/CE0Y7OL2K3

Lana Xu worked with me and Ben Lehmann on the Cosmic Neutrino Background as an undergraduate in the MIT UROP program.

Many of my graduate student collaborators, Dario Lorenzoni (Manitoba/ Winnipeg), Graham Roberts (UCSC), and others, are better described as collaborators and colleagues than mentees!

High school student Mikela Medina was my summer research student, participating remotely from Peru in the Harvard Open Bio summer program all while attending class in the middle of her school year. Her work modeling axon demyelination and conductance was featured in The Young Researcher.

Physics Courses

During my graduate career, I have co-taught or TA-ed for ten semesters, for courses ranging from introductory undergraduate subjects such as Classical Mechanics to advanced graduate courses like General Relativity. In particular, I have now been a TA for a quantum theory course (quantum I, II, or graduate quantum computation) for six semesters, and a recitation instructor for graduate General Relativity for two.

Tutoring

I also have extensive experience as a private one-on-one tutor, including through my position as Senior Tutor with the Cambridge Coaching Company since 2018. During my senior and junior years in high-school I was a one-on-one tutor for several students with special academic needs. I am now a private tutor working with a variety of students across math, physics, biology and natural sciences, english literature, and writing (from technical to prosaic to applications!). My students range in age and stage from around middle-school to well beyond graduate school! I love teaching and work very hard to meet my students where they’re at, and to find the most effective way to explain confusing subject matter and give my students the skills to learn and succeed!

Current subjects I am tutoring include: Electromagnetism, Differential Equations

Original Classes

In my time at MIT, I have created and taught several original classes, which I have taught at MIT and at a local high-school to students from seventh through twelfth grades through the Educational Studied Program, including:

1. Physics of Electric Guitar

2. Typographical Number Theory: Proving Gödel’s Incompleteness Theorem with the Achilles and the Tortoise

3. Venomous Snakes of Australia

4. The Physics of Rainbows

I have also co-created and taught a new workshop series for MIT Undergraduates in the Physics department (primarily juniors and seniors) looking to continue their physics education after college, titled “GAPS: Graduate Applications and Professional Strategies”, which successfully debuted in Fall of 2022.