About me

I am a PhD candidate at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. My interests encompass most aspects of statistics and data analysis and with my thesis work focusing on time series and signal processing with applications in magnetotellurics and geomagnetism.

To me, one of the most interesting concepts in physics is that if you were to put a loop of wire on your desk, grab a magnet, and begin waving it around above the wire that you would be able to measure a current in the wire. We would say that this current is “induced” by the changing magnetic field. The symmetric argument is that if we run a changing current through a wire, we would be able to detect a magnetic field around the wire generated by this current.

Now, this gets interesting when we consider that Earth is essentially a giant conductor surrounded by a (changing) magnetic field. If we look, we can measure induced currents in Earth’s surface, the strength of which are highly dependent on the type of material the current is traveling through. The study of these currents, Earth’s magnetic field, and what we can infer about Earth’s surface structure as a result is what the field of magnetotellurics is all about.

Applying statistical signal processing tools to magnetotelluric data is the topic on which I currently spend the bulk of my time.