I am broadly interested in climate physics – in understanding the behavior of the physical world around us and how our interactions with that world affect it, and in turn, affect us. I conducted my undergraduate research in the field of Astronomy; this past research involved analyzing large sets of radio telescope data to investigate molecular abundances in planetary nebulae and using archival satellite observations along with numerical models to study young, eclipsing binary stars. As part of Dr. Horton’s Climate Change Research Group, I plan to use many of these same skills and methods (e.g. working with remotely-sensed data and running climate models) in order to ask and answer questions about the environment that help us build more sustainable, just, and climate-resilient communities.

Awards & Fellowships

Oak and Ivy Award (2023, Swarthmore College)

William C. Elmore Prize, (2023, Swarthmore College Department of Physics and Astronomy, 2023)

Phi Beta Kappa (2023, Swarthmore College)

Sarah Kaighn Cooper Scholarship (2022, Swarthmore College)

Selected Publications

Schmidt, D., Gold, K., Sinclair, A., Bergstrom, S., Ziurys, L. HCN and HCO+ in Planetary Nebulae: The Next Level. The Astrophysical Journal, vol. 927, no. 1, 2022, p. 46. DOI:10.3847/1538-4357/ac4474  

Sinclair, A., Parts, C., Jensen, E., McLeod, K., Collins, K., Kielkopf, J. Discovering Young Eclipsing Binary Systems with TESS. Poster presented at: TESS Science Conference II; August 2 & 5, 2021