I've been working on sPHENIX for a combined seven-ish years now I think. I started working on the HCal when I was a graduate student back in 2016, took a brief hiatus to finish my dissertation, and then began working the commissioning of the EMCal as a postdoc at UIUC.

What is the focus of your work on the sPHENIX experiment?

Calibrations, calibrations, calibrations! I'm co-convener of the Calorimeter Calibrations group along with Blair Seidlitz and currently focused on calibrating our first run's worth of calorimeter data. I also work on deriving jet energy scale calibrations for the Jet Structure topical group.

Where were you born and what is your educational background before your current position?

I'm from Memphis, Tennessee originally (Go Grizzlies!). I got my degree in physics from Washington and Lee University in Virginia and pretty much immediately went off into graduate school at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia.

What is the title of your Ph.D. or tentative title? Awards or biggest talk highlight?

The title of my dissertation was "Jet-Like Correlations in 200GeV Au+Au Collisions," which was on an analysis I did in PHENIX, sPHENIX's predecessor. I was awarded the thesis award for it this year actually, alongside an NSF fellowship earlier this year and a RHIC-AGS Merit award (it's been a good year!).

How did you decide to go into heavy ion or spin research?

To be honest it wasn't even on my radar! Megan Connors, my PhD advisor, reached out to me and we had a very nice interview, talked about QCD and jets a little bit, and, well, the rest is history.

What do you like to do in your spare time?

Nerd stuff, of course. I love Dungeons and Dragons and currently have a group that plays every Sunday, play a lot of video games (playing through Jedi Survivor after just finishing Cyberpunk 2077), and my partner is just introducing me to Magic: The Gathering.

Fun fact?

I've recently started doing standup comedy and the opening bit of my routine is making fun of moving to Long Island.