Research Interests


I (finally) graduate from LSU in May of 2000 with a wonderful group of people. LSU was a great experience. Now, I am at The University of Alabama, which has greatly exceeded my expectations. They have given me wonderful opportunites that I might not have gotten at another graduate school. For example, this fall I will be teaching my first lecture course.

I passed the qualifying exam in January of 2002 and promptly asked Dr. Buta if he would be willing to advise me through the dissertation process. He focuses on galactic morphology, which I find fascinating as well as comprehensible.

We have two projects that we are working on simultaneously.

  • The Properties of non-barred ringed galaxies
  • We have just been awarded five nights to image 36 galaxies in five filters on the 1.5m telescope at the Cerro Tololo observatory in Chile.
  • We propose to connect barred and non-barred galaxies through evolutionary processes by focusing of galactic rings
  • Finding leading structure in spiral galaxies
  • NGC 4622 is an example of this extremely rare leading structure.



  • Location Date Telescope + Instrument
    CTIO August 2002 1.5-m TEK 2K direct imager
    CTIO December 2003 0.9-m TEK 2K direct imager
    CTIO June 2004 4.0-m RC Spectrograph