About Me

Thanks for visiting my blog! I’m a chemical engineer and space scientist who loves everything to do with instrumentation design and build. For some reason, I got completely obsessed with spectroscopy for space in my first year of undergrad. Everyone in the Queen’s engineering program does a semester long group project in first years for a wide variety of clients - my groups client was the Queen’s Space Engineering Team, and we were to design a microreactor to test soil for signs of life. I had a group of wonderful, driven people and we came up with a graduate level solution that included Raman and CD spectroscopy. We won the Mason cup award for the best project in the class (roughly 800 people, still my favourite achievement) and I have been completely obsessed ever since. I worked on an OA-ICOS spectrometer in grad school that is designed to test for Martian methane (managed to fix it, another thing I am very proud of) and built a prototype cloud sensor that could turn a camera on when Martian clouds were above. I also got the opportunity to go to NASA JPL and work on modelling the atmosphere of ancient Mars using MarsWRF. Since grad school, I have worked on the science behind a multispectral imager designed for lunar mineral and volatiles identification.

Genuinely, I’ve loved every second and would love to continue in the space industry. I consider myself one of the worlds luckiest people to have been able to work on the things that I have. Onwards and upwards!

My Background

Born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, but moved to Toronto when I was 1.5 (picture of baby abby). B.ASc from Queen’s Engineering, Engineering Chemistry (photo of me next to tank or something here) M.Sc from York University, Earth and Space Science (photo of me in Death Valley)

The best parts of my day are working with people and getting my hands dirty.

Outside of Work

I love line dancing, reading, scuba diving, and a good hike. I have been told my greatest quality is my enthusiasm - I LOVE space and want to make everyone else love space too.

(picture of me line dancing)