As of Fall 2008, I am in my 5th year of graduate school at the University of Minnesota. I work with my advisor, Prof. Evan Skillman on measuring and analyzing the star formation histories (SFHs) of dwarf galaxies in the local universe. Basically, I observe galaxies with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and process the images to produce color magnitude diagrams (CMDs) of our galaxies of interest. From the CMDs, we use stellar evolution models to determine the SFH of each galaxy. The SFHs tell us a lot about how the galaxies were formed and how they evolved to look like they do today.

Dwarf galaxies are particularly interesting because they are by far the most numerous in the universe, so we can study the effects of star formation on many different varities of galaxies. Even more interesting are dwarf irregular galaxies, which are actively forming stars today. Using unique properties of massive stars, such as blue and red helium burning stars we can make movies of star formation over the past 1 billion years or so. This allows us to see not only how the galaxies evolve, but also how some stars forming may cause other stars to form as well.

Currently, I am working on several different projects involving SFHs and the local universe, most notably studying the SFHs of dwarf irregular galaxies in the M81 Group and on the ANGST (ACS Nearby Galaxy Survery Treasury) project, which is a very large HST program devoted to studying the formation and evolution of galaxies in the nearby universe.