I am a 3rd year Ph.D student in the Department of Astronomy working with Dr. Ewan Douglas on the development of techniques and instrumentation for high contrast imaging in space. For my dissertation work I will be developing a testbed to test these techniques for a future small satellite telescope mission.

With the NASA Space Grant, I will be working in partnership with local astronomy education programs, including Astronomy Camp and the University of Arizona Sky Schools. I will develop inquiry-based hardware/instrumentation curriculum modules for their programs. Inquiry-based youth STEM education programs often lack this kind of content in their curriculum. This issue is particularly compounded when it comes to astronomy education programs. The development of new and innovative telescopes and instruments is critical to the cycle of research in astronomy. However, many instrumentation projects, particularly those meant for space, are large, complex, possibly decades-long endeavors, which even a professional astronomer may only ever work on one small part of. There is thus a need for an instrumentation curriculum for astronomy education programs which introduces students to the broad spectrum of instrumentation in a way that is engaging, relevant to them, and provides them with the opportunity to develop critical skills like design and engineering thinking. I will be developing a set of lectures, hands-on skills development workshops, and team project concepts which can be integrated into Astronomy Camp and in the Sky Schools to achieve this goal.