I'm a member of the faculty in the astronomy and astrophysics department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. My research focuses on the violent universe with an emphasis on stellar explosions, gamma-ray bursts, and accretion phenomena near compact objects. I did my graduate work at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge in England, where I was a member of Wolfson College. Before coming to Santa Cruz, I was a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.