I like to call the brown fleck in my left iris a mark of my endless curiosity for the universe. My optometrist likes to call it retinal sun damage.
When the 2017 solar eclipse washed over the Pennsylvanian sky during my high school marching band practice, I found myself without a pair of eclipse glasses. Though my interest in astronomy had been fleeting until then, I knew I’d be remiss to not look up just once—or twice—or ten times.
Over the next few weeks, I watched a brown freckle spawn in one of my always-blue eyes, and a trip to the eye doctor certified that my affinity for the cosmos might require some more expert supervision. So I soldiered through all the physics and calculus classes I could in high school, and I even tacked on an astrophysics minor to my journalism degree from George Washington University.
During my bachelor's, I sniffed out every opportunity I could to overlap my love for writing and physics, eventually leading me to a science writing internship at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center after my sophomore year.
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Goddard taught me the importance of fact checking, style guides, and accessible language. More importantly, it taught me the real-world impact of my work with every public outreach event I attended. ​
By the time the 2024 eclipse rolled around, I was once again without a pair of glasses, but this time because I was so excited to hand out the hundreds of pairs I collected to my fellow students.
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Since beginning my master’s in science communication at UC Santa Cruz, I’ve honed my narrative skills by writing for outlets I’ve long admired, like Live Science and Eos. I’ve also interned at MIT Technology Review and Symmetry Magazine, a particle physics collaboration through the Department of Energy.
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My studies are supported through the Council for the Advancement of Science Writing, which has awarded me the 2024 Graduate Fellowship for Physical Sciences, and UCSC's Astrobiology Communication Fellowship to cover ongoing research on life beyond Earth.
As I continue chronicling the universe’s biggest looming questions, I realize that my passion for storytelling and my compulsive need to look up into the unknown aren’t just compatible—they’re inextricable. When I face my next fateful eclipse in 2044, I hope not only to finally have my own pair of glasses, but to use my writing as a lens for the rest of the world to see it, too.
