I'm Will, a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Astronomy at Yale University, where I am an NSF Graduate Research Fellow and a Gruber Science Fellow. My research seeks to observationally identify the low-mass threshold of galaxy formation through the discovery of "ultra-faint" Milky Way satellites and the subsequent measurement of their internal kinematics, dark matter contents, and chemistries through spectroscopy.

Much of my discovery work has been carried out as part of the DELVE Survey - a 175+ night effort to image the southern sky with the Dark Energy Camera on the 4m Blanco Telescope in Chile. The spectroscopic component of my work then involves obtaining with the largest optical telescopes on the planet, including the 10m Keck telescopes (Hawai'i), the 8m Gemini telescopes (Hawai'i/Chile), and the 6.5m Magellan telescopes (Chile). This work is now transitioning into a new era with the Vera C. Rubin Observatory.

I am fortunate to be able to carry out this work with many wonderful scientists and mentors. My thesis advisor at Yale is Prof. Marla Geha, and I also collaborate closely with Profs. Alex Drlica-Wagner and Alex Ji (UChicago), Prof. Ting Li (Univ. of Toronto), Dr. Josh Simon (Carnegie Obs.), and Dr. Andrew Pace (UVA).