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phonetic name spelling: AYkh-dhaa PUH-tell

click here to hear the pronunciation

​pronouns: she/her/hers

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I was born and raised in Northeastern and Central New Jersey. I received my Bachelor's degree in Physics from New York University in 2014. I then completed my Ph.D. in Astronomy & Astrophysics at the University of Arizona in 2019 under the mentorship of Professor Gurtina Besla. My thesis work focused on combining high-precision astrometric data with simulated data from cosmological simulations to explore the dynamics of satellite galaxies around the Milky Way and Andromeda. I am a member of the HSTPROMO collaboration and the Panchromatic Hubble Andromeda Southern Treasury (PHAST) collaboration.

 

From August 2023-2025, I was a NASA Hubble Fellow at the University of Utah. During August 2022-2023, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at UC Berkeley. Prior to that, I was a Miller Fellow at the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science at the University of California, Berkeley.