I have always been a curious and enthusiastic individual who loves physics and mathematics. When I discovered the University of Nevada Reno (UNR) offered a geophysics degree, a subject that applied physics and mathematics to understand the Earth—I enthusiastically selected my major and never looked back. In 2011, the summer before I graduated, I was selected as an Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) intern. I studied slow slip earthquakes along the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Upon my return to UNR at the end of summer I began working on a research project simulating earthquakes and the ground motion response of the Las Vegas basin, which led to my first publication. In 2012 I graduated with a B.S. degree in geophysics and I was employed by Multi-Phase Technologies (MPT) as a staff geophysicist. I worked on a variety of projects such as using electrical resistivity to locate abandoned mine tunnels and monitoring heat sources between two wells using time-lapse resistivity measurements.
I left MPT to pursue my Ph.D. at the University of Wyoming. I am currently in my third year and part of the Wyoming Center for Environmental Hydrology and Geophysics (WyCEHG). I am interested in using near-surface geophysical methods as an imaging tool to provide new and unique perspectives of the subsurface that will improve understanding of hydrologic systems, ecosystems, weathering and erosional processes in the top 10 to 100 meters of Earth’s subsurface. Furthermore, I am interested in improving the ability to estimate the spatial distribution of parameters influencing groundwater flow and storage, specifically porosity. I am trying to exploit the sensitivity of seismic velocities in the vadose zone and surface nuclear magnetic resonance’s unique ability to determine pore scale properties in the saturated zone to provide spatially exhaustive estimates of porosity. Currently, I am working with an extensive geophysical data set comprised of 25 seismic refraction profiles, 27 electrical resistivity lines and 5 surface nuclear magnetic resonance soundings in a granite catchment in the Laramie Range, Wyoming. I am using these data, in combination with borehole data, to image subsurface structure, characterize preferential flow paths, and estimate porosity on large scales (100’s of meters).