Education:
B.A., Physics (With Honors), Vassar College, 2005
B.A., Astronomy (With Honors), Vassar College, 2005
Correlate, Computer Science, Vassar College, 2005

Graduation Honors:
General Honors, Departmental Honors in Astronomy, Departmental Honors in Physics, Lucy Kellog English Prize in Astronomy, Sigma Xi

Honors and Fellowships:
Associate Member, Sigma Xi, May 2005 - present
Florida Space Grant Fellow, Sept. 2006 - present
Junior Member, American Astronomical Society, Oct. 2006 - present
Junior Member, Division for Planetary Science, Oct. 2006 - present
Member, Delta Epsilon Iota, February 2007 - present

Currently: Third Year Graduate Student, University of Florida

Like most astronomers, I am fascinated by every aspect of the field. I also love to learn about all kinds of subjects, especially but by no means limited to science, and would greatly enjoy learning and working in any subject spanning across biology, chemistry, physics, astronomy, geology, computer science, technology, engineering, etc. However, time does place a limit on what one can work on full-time, therefore, here are my current areas of interest:

Primary Scientific Interests: extrasolar planets

Other Scientific Interests: planetary exploration/planetary science, planet formation, star formation, stellar evolution, brown dwarfs

See my Research page available from the Main Page for detailed information on current research.

Teaching Experience:
Academic intern at Vassar College, tutoring for the astronomy department (2003-2004).
Teaching Assistant - AST1022L - Intro. Astronomy Lab., Fall 2005 and Spring 2006, University of Florida, 2 sections each semester

Public Outreach:
Observatory Tour Guide for weekly Open Nights (to the public) - Vassar College, 2001-2005
Public Night Volunteer - University of Florida, Campus Teaching Observatory, 2005-2006
Volunteer Science Judge, Howard Bishop Middle School, Gainesville, FL, December 2005

Work Experiences Before Graduate School:
Performed data reduction of images of the quasar BL Lac taken with Vassar College's 32-inch reflecting telescope (2001-2002).

Was an URSI (Undergraduate Research Summer Imposium) Student at Vassar College working with James Lombardi on integrating stellar dynamics, stellar evolution and hydrodynamics codes used to simulate globular cluster evolution. Took stellar dynamics data, used a stellar evolution code to generate parent star models and collided the stars to obtain a merger product using a Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics code. Also gave a talk and presented a poster at the URSI Symposium held on campus (2002-2003).

Presented a talk on URSI research done over the summer of 2002 at the KNAC meeting at Haverford College (2002).

Summer Student Program intern at the Space Telescope Science Institute working with Peter McCullough on the XO Project. Specifically, I worked on a period-finding code for extrasolar planetary transits, a code for generating artificial, quadratically limb-darkened light curves for various stellar and orbital parameters, and on setting up and using the Sun Grid Engine (SGE) to run jobs across many machines on both a Solaris network and a Linux Beowulf cluster (2003).

Presented a talk on STScI research done over the summer of 2003 with Dr. Peter McCullough at the KNAC meeting at Wellesley College (2003).

Summer Student Program intern at the Space Telescope Science Institute working with Peter McCullough on the XO Project. Specifically, I worked on evaluating our transiting extrasolar planet candidates, creating "Wanted Posters" for each candidate, indicating what information we already had and what information we needed/wanted.

Senior thesis work at Vassar College Fall 2004 - Spring 2005 investigating the effects of observing windows on transit survey abilities to detect long-period Hot Jupiters vs. a single detection of a short-period Hot Jupiter. (2004-2005)

Presented a talk on STScI research done over the summer of 2004 with Dr. Peter McCullough at the KNAC meeting at Colgate University (2005).

Worked with Dr. Jian Ge over the summer of 2005 working on the software data reduction code for the ET Project, a radial velocity extrasolar planet search program. During the Fall of 2005, worked on developing a slant-correction subroutine for fringed, ThAr spectra files and data reduction of passive, fixed-delay interferometer data. (2005)

Observing Experience:
0.9 meter Coude feed, Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ, 26 Dec 2005 - 6 Jan 2005, ET Project followup on candidates and additional search stars
2.5 meter Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Telescope, Sunspot, NM, 4 May 2006 - 15 May 2006, ASEPS Project Trial Survey (~400 stars) before pilot program
2.1 meter telescope, Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ, 30 Jun 2006 - 9 Jul 2006, ET followup
2.1 meter telescope, Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ, 4 Sep 2006 - 9 Sep 2006, ET followup and begining of ET as a shared-risk instrument
2.5 meter Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Telescope, Sunspot, NM, 27 Nov 2006 - 8 Dec 2006, ASEPS Project Pilot Program
2.5 meter Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Telescope, Sunspot, NM, 26 Jan 2007 - 4 Feb 2007, ASEPS Project Pilot Program
2.5 meter Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Telescope, Sunspot, NM, 23 Feb 2007 - 8 Mar 2007, ASEPS Project Pilot Program
2.1 meter telescope, Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ, 29 Jun 2007 - 9 Jul 2007, ET followup
2.1 meter telescope, Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ, 5 Sep 2007 - 13 Sep 2007, ET/MARVELS engineering (Coude feed high-res I2 spectra)
2.1 meter telescope, Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ, 22 Jan 2008 - 1 Feb 2008, ET/MARVELS followup
2.1 meter telescope, Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ, 20 Feb 2008 - 29 Feb 2008, ET/MARVELS followup
2.1 meter telescope, Kitt Peak National Observatory, AZ, 13 May 2008 - 20 May 2008, ET/MARVELS followup

2.5 meter Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) Telescope, Sunspot, NM, 8 Sep 2008 - 22 Sep 2008, MARVELS First Light / Commissioning

Computer Languages:
C++, Fortran, HTML, Java, IDL, Java SWING (GUI development packages)

Some Major Scientific/Mathematical Software:
ds9, IRAF, SuperMongo, Matlab, Mathematica, Excel

Operating Systems:
Windows, Mac, Solaris, Linux

Conferences Attended:
Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Undergraduate Research Symposium, 2001, Williams College, USA
Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Undergraduate Research Symposium, 2002, Haverford College, USA
MODEST-1: MOdelling DEnse STellar Systems, 2002, American Museum of Natural History, New York, NY, USA
Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Undergraduate Research Symposium, 2003, Wellesley College, USA
Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium Undergraduate Research Symposium, 2004, Colgate University, USA
SAMSI Astrostatistics Conference, 2005, SAMSI building, Research Triangle Park, NC, USA
2007 Winter AAS Meeting, Seattle, WA, USA
IAU Symposium 249: Exoplanets: Formation, Detection and Dynamics, 2007, Suzhou, China
IAU Symposium 253: Transiting Planets, 2008, Boston, MA

Refereed Publications (Chronological Newest to Oldest):
Mahadevan, S., Ge, J., Fleming, S.W., Wan, X., DeWitt, C., van Eyken, J.C., McDavitt, D., 2008, PASP, in press
-Paper summarizing our results measuring relative RV using a prototype monolithic interferometer for increased long-term stability (and ultimately throughput as well) when using the DFDI technique.

Fleming, S.W., Kane, S.R., McCullough, P.R., Chromey, F.R., 2008, MNRAS, 386, 1503F
-About the ability of wide-field transit surveys to observe transiting, intermediate-period giant planets (particularly those in the Habitable Zone) individually and the advantages of collaborating by sharing photometry.

Mahadevan, S., van Eyken, J., Ge, J., DeWitt, C., Fleming, S.W., Cohen, R., Crepp, J., Vanden Heuvel, A., 2008, ApJ, 678, 1505
-Demonstrates the ability of the Exoplent Tracker instrument (and the DFDI radial velocity technique in general) to measure precise absolute radial velocities.

Ge, J., Wan, X., Zhao, B., Hariharan, A., Mahadevan, S., van Eyken, J., Guo, P., McDavitt, D., DeWitt, C., Cohen, R., Fleming, S.W., Kane, S., Crepp, J., Shaklan, S., SPIE, 2006, 6269E, 75G
-Description of the Keck ET instrument, a multi-object radial velocity planet search instrument used at Sloan that will conduct an all-sky search for planets

McCullough, P.R., Stys, J.E., Valenti. J.A., Johns-Krull, C.M., Janes, K.A., Heasley, J.N., Bye, B.A., Dodd, C., Fleming, S.W., Pinnick, A., Bissinger, R., Gary, B.L., Howell, P.J., Vanmunster, T., ApJ, 2006, 648, 1228M
- Discovery paper for GSC 02041-01657b (XO-1), the XO Project's first transiting planet discovery

Ge, J., van Eyken, J., Mahadevan, S., DeWitt, C., Kane, S.R., Cohen, R., Vanden Heuvel, A., Fleming, S.W., Guo, P., Henry, G., Schneider, D.P., Ramsey, L.W., Wittenmyer, R.A., Endl, M., Cochran, W.D., Ford, E.B., Martin, E.L., Israelian, G., Valenti, J., Montes, D., ApJ, 2006, 648, 683G.
- Discovery paper for HD 102195b (ET-1) the ET Project's first planet discovery

McCullough, P.R., Stys, J.E., Valenti, J.A., Fleming, S.W., James, K.A., Heasley, J.N., PASP, 117, 783M, 2005
- Description of the XO Project's instrument setup and observational techniques for hunting transiting extrasolar planets

Lombardi, J.C., Thrall, A.C., Deneva, J.S., Fleming, S.W., Grabowski, P.E., MNRAS, 345, 762L, 2003
- SPH modeling of collisions involving three stars in globular clusters

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