Landing Page
Hi there, I'm Jackie! Welcome to my website! I plan to build this site up to showcase my work, build new technical skills, and share some fun facts. It's still under construction, but here's some things you can check out!
- This is a dashboard that illustrates some climate hazard analysis that my team and I have done in the Houston region (under construction)
- The Cat Corner features some pretty awesome photos!
- Here's a video on pigeon rolling (yes, pigeon rolling) that I made a few years ago
- My Github, LinkedIn, and list of current publications are also available
About Me
I'm a computational physicist based in NYC, and I've been doing fluid simulations and scientific computing for... at least a decade now. Time flies! Nowadays I'm tropical cyclone hazard modeling at Columbia University's climate school, Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. Most of that work revolves around modeling storm surge in GeoClaw, as well as modeling wind and other related hazards. I'm hoping to get into the cat modeling industry! (E.g. catastrophe modeling - the cat corner is something else).
Before my postdoc at Columbia, I got my PhD in computational soft-matter physics at NYU. I studied acoustics with David Grier's team, and used the immersed boundary method to model acoustic forces more efficiently than existing compressible flow solvers. While my work was computational, I did build an acoustic levitator using a DIY kit online. It can levitatetiny styrophone balls, which is fun at parties. Before that, I studied active matter at Brandeis, specifically modeling self assembly in microtubules under strong confinement.
If I were to give you a narrative "story" describing my research trajectory, I'd note the following themes:
- Separation of scale;
- Using cheap, low-cost models to do more;
- Fidgeting with fine details until things work, and then scaling.
Lately, I've really been enjoying learning new coding skills. I periodically go onto deep dives into topics that interest me (see my extensive pigeon knowledge, for example) and revently I've been diving into HTML, javascript, linux and bash commands, networking, and a tiny bit of SQL. I love tinkering with things, solving problems. Anyways, that's all for now. More soon!