I am currently a graduate student working on a PhD in Physics at the University of California Santa Cruz. I study the formation and evolution of galaxies with my thesis advisor Joel Primack and collaborators T.J. Cox, Avishai Dekel, and Patrik Jonsson. My research uses a large set of hydrodynamical galaxy merger simulations as a test bed for constructing simple, physically-based models for the processes that occur during galaxy mergers. More recently, I have been extending this work to examine comparisions between the simulations and observed galaxies in collaboration with AEGIS.

My research areas of interest include:

• models of galaxy mergers
• origin and evolution of the fundamental scaling relations of galaxies
• fueling of Active Galactic Nuclei
• dynamical friction and orbits of satellite dark matter halos
• understanding the roles of hydrodynamics and feedback in galaxy formation