Bio

Hey! I’m Stephanie!

I graduated with my PhD in Physics from the University of Michigan in 2019. While there, I used the Dark Energy Survey to study…well…not dark energy. Instead, I spent 5 years repurposing the survey to discover and study new objects in our Solar System beyond Neptune! This region of the Solar System is called the “Kuiper Belt.” There’s a lot of interest in studying this region because it has remained largely untouched since the Solar System reached essentially its present state. This means we can study these objects, what they’re made of, and how they orbit the Sun to learn what the very early Solar System looked like and how it has evolved over the past 4.5 billion years.

I discovered the wonderful world of science communication in graduate school and since then, I’ve given several public talks about astronomy, written dozens of articles about new astronomy results for Astrobites, participated in and led science communication training workshops through the RELATE organization at UMich, and organized science communication conferences like ComSciCon and Science Talk 2020. In Summer 2019, I worked as a science reporter for the Indianapolis Star through a AAAS Mass Media Fellowship. Now, I'm the Astronomy Content Strategist for Rubin Observatory, where I get to tell astronomy stories for a living.

If you want to hear me talk endlessly about astronomy over on Twitter (@SpaceSciSteph), feel free to follow me there!

My socials!