Greetings! I am an astrophysicist studying supermassive black holes at the centers of galaxies in Seattle. As these objects grow and interact with their host galaxies they can become the brightest continuous sources of light in the Universe. I am particularly interested in studying black holes that are hidden behind large amounts of gas and dust from the host galaxy. It is still an open question as to how important they are to overall black hole growth in the universe.
I use ground and space-based observatories from the X-rays to the radio for my research. I have led as principle investigator more than 102 successful space, instrumentation, and ground based telescope proposals with over $4.5 million in associated funds for observing, instrumentation, software development, or postdoctoral fellowships mostly from NASA. I enjoy working with students and have supervised 11 Masters Thesis and 13 Undergraduate Thesis over my career. I am a cofounder of the BASS survey and the associate PI for Science for the AXIS probe class mission, a billion dollar high spatial resolution X-ray mission proposal.