Hello, I'm Adrian Crawford! (they/she)Current WorkMy most recent work--Peaky Finders, https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.03735--created the first ever early-time population statistics that described the double-peaked light curves of Type IIb supernovae (SNe IIb). These light curves hold more clues into the progenitor system than typical single-peaked light curves. The partially stripped natured of SNe IIb make them an interesting probe into mass loss in massive stars. We plan expand this work into other multi-peaked light curves of transients that we can find in our night sky as we anticipate the nightly deluge that the Vera C. Rubin Legacy Survey of Space and Time (Rubin LSST) will bring later in 2024.
It's necessary for Rubin LSST to quickly and reliably identify a millions of transient events each night, so that astronomers know what objects to focus their time and energy on and where to send our limited follow-up resources. Currently, most training data sets for LSST on supernovae use simulated data, but theory doesn't always match reality, so it's important to create data-driven training sets that consist of real observations of supernovae. |
I am currently a 4th year Ph.D. candidate at the University of Virginia. I am working with Maryam Modjaz as part of the Modjaz Explosions and Transients Astronomy Lab (METAL). I've done work on the very small (white dwarfs), to the very largest (galaxy clusters), and now (some of) the most energetic (supernovae). I have experience using theoretical, analytic, and computational methods in my research.
I graduated from UT Austin in May 2021 with a B.S. in Astronomy and a B.S. in Physics. I earned my M.S. in May 2023 on the way towards my Ph.D. |