Before beginning my PhD I carried out instrumentation research as both an undergraduate summer student and as a research assistant after
completion of my undergraduate studies. As a summer student I performed initial design studies for the calibration unit of
the first-light adaptive optics system for the Thirty~Meter~Telescope (TMT), called NFIRAOS (SPIE proceedings).
As a research assistant I took part in the early characterization of the image-slicer for the WIFIS integral field spectrograph,
and detector characterization for both WIFIS and the NIRES echelle spectrograph at the W.M Keck observatory. I also built a differential image motion monitor that I took to the high Canadain Arctic as part of
a broader site-testing campaign.
