I am a physicist by training. I am currently working for LIGO, an experiment to detect gravitational waves. More specifically, I am working on a project called Interactions in Understanding the Universe (I2U2), which is a confederation of the QuarkNet project at Fermilab, the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, LIGO, the ATLAS and CMS experiments for the LHC at CERN, and the Computational Institute at the University of Chicago. The goal of I2U2 is to contribute to US science education by facilitating inquiry-driven learning which makes use of real data from working physics experiments, along with the power to analyze these data using Grid computing.

One of my contributions to I2U2 is to develop "Bluestone", a web-based analysis tool which mimics tools available in the LIGO control room, and which will give students direct access to LIGO evironmental data and the ability to run those data through analysis workflows.