In my first year at CSU, I will be working with Dr. Michael Bell to utilize polarimetric radar and disdrometer data from recent DOE campaigns, TRACER and CACTI, along with high-resolution RAMS model simulations. My research aims to explore precipitation formation and variability in relation to cloud lifecycle, vertical velocity, thermodynamics, environmental factors, and aerosols. I will focus on deriving size distributions from polarimetric radar, applying variational techniques for 3D multi-Doppler wind retrievals, and integrating aerosol data to investigate the interactions between dynamical and microphysical processes, with an emphasis on the role of aerosols, environmental conditions, and precipitation development.

During the summer of 2023, I earned the opportunity to intern at the Brookhaven National Laboratory with Dr. Fan Yang to analyze Doppler lidar measurements at the Southern Great Plains Oklahoma measurement user facility. I spent the summer utilizing python to quantify turbulent structures around shallow cumulus clouds under various environmental conditions. Throughout this research I created a cloud identification algorithm in Python to understand the kinematic structure of individual shallow cumulus clouds observed in the boundary layer. I presented this work at the Midwest Student Conference on Atmospheric Research in September of 2023, and I had the opportunity to speak at the Brookhaven National Lab Intern Report at the end of the summer. I continued this research into my senior year coursework at Illinois as my capstone project with a goal to understand the impact of shadows on lidar observations and cumulate my findings in my senior research thesis.

I have conducted research with Dr. Robert Rauber on two projects: Seeded and Natural Orographic Wintertime Clouds: the Idaho Experiment (SNOWIE), and The Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast-Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS). While working on SNOWIE, I investigated the synoptic sources of dry instructions for each research flight. This research did not lead to a significant answer which led to the second project, IMPACTS. I began to study the IMPACTS data from the snowstorm which passed through the Midwest and the North-East 1800 UTC 01 February- 0000 UTC 06 February. Through this, I have begun to work on understanding the microphysics of the frontal structure of the system. As a part of my research work, I have had the opportunity to present these IMPACTS findings at 6th annual Midwest Student Conference on Atmospheric Research (MSCAR) as well as the Science Team Meeting for NASA IMPACTS. These projects have given me a strong background in research.