Overview
I am originally from Tokyo, Japan, and started my academic journey in the United States after high school. I earned my B.S. in Physics and Minor in Astrophysics from the University of Hawaii at Manoa in 2016, and my Ph.D. in Physics with Astrophysics Emphasis from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2021 where I worked with Prof. Andy Howell on supernovae and gravitational-wave events using the global telescope network of Las Cumbres Observatory. I was then a postdoctoral research fellow at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian before joining the University of Florida as an Assistant Professor in 2025.
Education
- Ph.D., Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2021
- M.A., Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2019
- B.S., Physics, University of Hawaii at Manoa, 2016
Research Interests
I am mainly interested in how massive stars die as explosive transients called supernovae. I use both observations and simulations of supernovae to extract their progenitor and explosion properties from the time series of photometry and spectroscopy. In particular, I would like to answer the key questions like, what are the progenitors doing in the final years before explosion, where is the lowest/highest progenitor-mass boundary that results in a supernova, and how much heavy elements do such extreme supernovae produce? Using the same set of techniques, I also study gravitational-wave events from the mergers of neutron stars and/or black holes, fast radio bursts from highly magnetized neutron stars, and tidal disruption events from stars torn apart by supermassive black holes.
Areas of Study/Expertise
- Supernova
- Transient Surveys
- Time-Domain and Multi-Messenger Astronomy